


Oasis

by ehefic



Series: Gravity [3]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Canon Queer Character, Dina POV, F/F, Feelings Realization, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26349037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehefic/pseuds/ehefic
Summary: Dina realizes how she really feels about Ellie, over the course of a week leading up to the dance.This is a shorter companion piece to Jackson Days, from Dina's perspective.COMPLETE
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Series: Gravity [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887190
Comments: 213
Kudos: 434





	1. a flower in the desert

**Author's Note:**

> Although this piece stands on its own, I strongly recommend reading the [previous work in the series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61377817) before reading this one, to preserve a few surprises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can't make it through the first scene, just skip to the second!
> 
> Jackson Days companion chapters: [21](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62733625), [24](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/63060454), [25](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/63144595)

Dina avoided Jesse’s eyes, angry with him and herself. Angry with him for saying it, again. Angry with herself for letting that feed her guilt, and letting her guilt make stupid decisions when she knew better.

Jesse knocked on the door and said her name. He would want to talk about it, again. He never just left it alone anymore.

“Can you just back off?” she snapped—then sighed, her hands pausing under the tap. “I just need a minute.”

Jesse went quiet, but he stayed by the door. The heat of the moment had worn off already and goosebumps crept up her bare arms and legs. She allowed herself another moment of solitude, another quart of freshwater wasted on her clean hands.

When she opened the door, Jesse was right there, too close and too naked.

“Can you put some fucking pants on before you poke somebody’s eye out?” She brushed past him and crossed to the dresser.

“You don’t have to wig out about it every time,” he said. His tone was defensive. “We’ve never actually had a problem.”

Dina stuffed her feet into a pair of sweatpants. “Fucking easy for you to say,” she said.

Jesse shuffled behind her. She kept her back turned. “If you don’t think they work, why do we even use one, huh? It’s not like I wouldn’t mind—”

“We use one because you have a pretty fucking imperfect record of pulling out in time,” she shot behind her.

“Not sure you can put that on me this time,” he shot back. She sighed, layering a sweater over her undershirt. Before she could respond, he added more quietly, “It’s not like I’m saying it so you’ll… do that. I mean, I say it because I mean it, and like, in the moment, that’s what I’m feeling.”

She could feel it coming, building gradually as he spoke, and she winced at the same time he said it: “I _love_ you, Dina.”

Without looking, she could picture him perfectly, perched on the edge of the bed, back in his faded plaid boxers and long-sleeve shirt. She could see his patient expression and the pain lurking in his eyes, the hurt of loving without being loved back.

It seemed like he should know, by now, that all these years, all this time, all of it amounted to something like love; all of it added up to something roughly the same. Even if Dina couldn’t say the words out loud.

But Jesse didn’t work that way.

“Can you just—go home?” she asked, staring at the menorah on top of the dresser, at the filigree worn smooth from the touch of hundreds of hands.

Jesse sighed and the bed creaked as he stood. His hand came down heavy and warm on her shoulder. “I checked the condom anyway, and it looked fine,” he said. “You worry way too much.”

Dina slapped his hand off, harder than she meant to. “You don’t fucking worry at all.”

“That’s not—”

“Go home. Please.”

\--

Jesse must’ve gotten the hint last night, because when Dina double-checks the assignment board, he’s swapped his name with Ellie’s as her patrol partner.

Ellie and Shimmer are already loitering by the gate when Dina walks over. Ellie faces away, brushing Shimmer’s mane with her fingers, reaching on tip-toe in her stupid canvas sneakers. Dina smiles a little. “Howdy, partner,” she says.

Ellie turns toward her. Her eyes and smile look tired. “Morning,” she says, worrying the stitching on the reins.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me today,” Dina says lightly.

“What else is new?” Ellie smiles wider, a sweet, sassy smirk.

\--

Today, Ellie leads the way up. The trail goes straight uphill most of the way, and when they reach the top and dismount, Dina digs a carrot out of her bag for Japan in appreciation. Hiking that on foot would be pretty brutal.

“This hill would be so awesome to sled down,” Dina says, looking down the way they came. The snow is soft and unbroken; one slope catches the morning sun and gleams, bright and blinding. “Too bad it’s so far from town.”

When she looks, Ellie is peering at the trail, too, curiously. “We could try it after we clear the ridge, if you want,” she offers. “We’re already here.”

“Ellie,” Dina says, so Ellie turns to face her. Immediately, Ellie reflects her excitement like a mirror. “That’s a fucking great idea.”

Ellie rubs her neck. “Well, I’m pretty fucking great,” she says.

Dina pushes her and walks up to the lookout.

\--

The ridge is clear except for a small pack of infected, down on the far side of the hill. Dina points them out and together, they creep down to a cluster of thick, spiny bushes. They sneak up on the two closest runners, then Dina takes one out with her pistol and Ellie rushes the fourth with her knife. Dina turns in time to see the body slip from Ellie’s embrace, her arms and gloves flecked with blood.

“Not bad,” Dina says, watching the fluid movement of the knife as Ellie wipes it, closes it, and pockets it.

Ellie grins at her, her eyes cool and full. “Nice shot.”

“Thanks.”

Ellie brushes her coat off, flattening it against her front, and jerks her head back toward the top of the ridge. “C’mon.”

When Dina catches up, Ellie’s walking back out the doors, hefting a café table over one shoulder. Dina holds the door open. “Feel like a picnic?” Dina teases.

“I’m taking you sledding,” Ellie says, treading past her in the snow. At the edge of the slope, she sets the table upside-down, holding the table leg steady, and looks at Dina expectantly.

Dina smirks at her and switches from a walk to a run, bounding through the wet snow and diving onto the table like it’s the surface of the lake. Ellie startles and lets go of the leg, and Dina catches it so her body weight shoves the makeshift sled over the precipice.

The snow is just right for sledding, thick and wet enough to support her, but not wet enough to drag. Unfortunately, the tabletop is an imperfect sled, the front edge biting into the snow instead of skidding over it, and Dina makes it just over halfway down before the table tumbles over and she does, too.

When she pulls her head up, spitting snow out, Ellie’s laughing at her, tromping down the horse trail, her arms flailing for balance. “You okay?” Ellie calls.

“Your sled sucks,” Dina calls back, sitting up and wiping wet chunks of snow off her coat.

Ellie catches up and offers her a hand. Dina takes it and climbs to her feet, brushing more snow off before it can soak into her jeans. “You must be freezing in those stupid fucking shoes,” she teases, shaking snow off her own boots.

“In a way, that just makes me really, really cool,” Ellie jokes with a shrug. She hefts the table back over her shoulder like a heavy parasol.

“That’s so dumb it’s not even funny.”

“It’s a little funny.” Ellie shuffles back to the trail and up the hill.

“You could just leave the table,” Dina calls as she follows. “It’s not like somebody’s gonna miss it.”

“Ha, ha. It’s my turn. I’m not letting you have all the fun.”

\--

At the lookout, Ellie ducks outside to pee. For once, she leaves her bag, and Dina grins to herself and unzips it the second Ellie’s out the door.

Ellie’s always been shy about her drawings, even when they were kids, but she’s gotten even more reserved over the years. Dina barely sees the sketchbook at all anymore, except to see Ellie snap it shut when she approaches.

Ellie’s always been shy about her best qualities.

So, today, seeing the opportunity, Dina immediately digs the sketchbook out and lets it drop open to the last used page.

But instead of the image she expected, the white crested pine trees and the soft held breath of the valley in early morning, it’s her own face on the page.

\--

After their mother passed, Talia grew more paranoid, reading omen and significance into everything. Rather than aimless orphans who drew a bad lot in a hard world, for Talia they were burdened with divine purpose, a tiny tribe cast back out into the desert to wander in search of the Promised Land.

For Dina, the desert carried a different lesson: caution. Many of Talia’s hopes and havens were mirages, beautiful from afar but dangerous or desolate up close. And the lesson echoed everywhere, in angry snakes hiding in bags and boxes, in bodies crusted with fungus that lurched to their feet upon approach.

When Dina left the desert, alone, she let caution lead her, not faith. When she found a group of travelers heading north, she thanked them for welcoming her, but slept with her boots on and her pistol safety off. When she found Jackson, with its high walls and courteous guards, she hoped for the best, but braced for the worst.

For months after she settled, Jackson felt too good to be true. She dove in headfirst, eager to soak in whatever kindness she could get before the illusion inevitably faded. There were so many people that it felt like a dream, or a memory. It had been years since the settlement in Albuquerque. When she spoke to people, she found herself touching their shoulders or elbows, making sure they were real.

Even after years in Jackson, she found it hard to let herself look at things more deeply. It still felt like under close examination, the image would warp or buckle. Talia used to say that their people were denied the Promised Land because they lacked faith, so Dina tried her best to keep faith in Jackson. It felt like if she questioned it, if she pulled back some hidden curtain, the milk and honey would wither away to the dry, dusty gullies of New Mexico, leaving her to fear and thirst, the only certainties in life.

\--

Dina flips the page back, impulsively. The prior page has a short block of text in Ellie’s cramped handwriting, framed by scribbled moths and vines, and the opposing page has another, smaller drawing of Dina, the hand copied several times in duplicate practice sketches.

Flipping back, there are more sketches. Five. Ten. Dozens and dozens of them. Almost all of her.

Dina snaps the book shut, shoves it back in the backpack, and closes the zipper.

Ellie’s been drawing… her. Not once. Many times, over many months. Maybe even years.

There was probably a time when Dina could have discarded it as meaningless, or innocent. But Ellie’s notebook had no other faces; no other people.

And, with this discovery fallen in her lap, Dina finds she can’t keep the truth at arm’s length anymore. This last thread is a weft, weaving the others together: Ellie’s pauses and hesitations; the way she breaks eye contact or draws away; her awkwardness and distance when Jesse’s around; her abiding depression, enduring long after her mysterious departure and long after Cat; and her eyes, her stare, the way she watches and lingers.

Ellie’s in love with her.

\--

When Ellie comes back in, when she pauses at the door and her brow creases in a little frown, Dina can see it as clear as day, all over her face.

“What?” Ellie asks, sliding the door shut.

Her cheeks are red from the cold; her eyes are tired, a little puffy, and her expression is soft and guarded. Below it all, as palpable and invisible as the icy winter air, is love.

“Nothing,” Dina says, shaking her head. She thinks of Ellie an hour ago on the ski lift, dragging her pencil across the page with infinite care, waiting and wishing.

\--

One winter morning, Dina woke early from a nightmare too heavy to shake. She dragged herself out of bed, took a bracing cold shower, and got dressed, but her body still felt leaden and sluggish. Talia’s face haunted her, bloodied and scratched, her glasses broken.

Dina found herself flicking her lighter open and kindling the shammash, even though Hanukkah was long over. Lighting the candles always made her feel close to Talia. She could almost imagine Talia here in her little house in Jackson, pushing her glasses up her nose, scolding Dina for abusing the mitzvah for personal comfort.

She placed two more candles and lit them with the first, staring at the flames as she set the shammash back in its raised holder in the center. If she focused, she could almost transport herself back, back to that last night they’d had together. They’d huddled in a barricaded hotel room, the windows drawn and covered with musty blankets, the menorah propped on the bathroom vanity, far from curious eyes. Talia had lit the candles and recited the blessings while Dina sat on the rim of the dirty bathtub.

It was hard to remember Talia’s voice after all this time. Every time she tried, it sounded more and more like her own voice, instead.

She sat on the bed for hours, staring at the candles and that unshakable image of Talia’s ruined face. With practiced care, she held the image and began to work it, walking herself through her memories of tending Talia’s body, cleaning and clothing her, laying her to rest.

By the time she heard a knock, the afternoon sun was weak, the room shadowed. She made no move to answer. A little while later, minutes or hours, the door opened without a knock.

Jesse came right over to the bed, sitting beside her, touching her shoulder. “What’s up?”

Whatever might have comforted her, that wasn’t it. She sat stony and still.

“Whatever you need, I’m here,” he said, his words firm and certain.

For some reason, she laughed. Her eyes found the candles again. “I don’t know what I need.”

Jesse turned his hand to fit more closely, his fingers touching her neck, his thumb resting on her collarbone through her thick jacket. “I’m still here,” he said.

And as much as this was something she had always wanted, someone to care for her and be there for her always, something about it was wrong. For all his surety and warmth, Jesse felt far away.

“I need you to not be here,” she said. It came out quiet, a whisper.

Jesse froze for a moment. There was a rigidity to him as he drew his hand away. She sensed an edge coming out, a sharpness to his manner and movements. He stood slowly.

For a moment, she thought he would just go, like she’d asked. Instead he hovered, closing and opening his fists, the zipper of his open jacket catching and releasing the light of the flames.

“You can’t just push me away whenever you’re upset,” he said. “I want to be here for you. I want to help. Let me.”

Dina stared at the flames. Her body was too heavy to move, even just to speak.

“I love you,” he said quietly. It sounded harsh.

“I can’t do this right now,” she said. She felt the tickle of tears incoming.

“I love you, and you won’t even say it back,” he said, his voice breaking. “It’s been—How long do you need?”

Dina let loose a wry laugh. “Jesse, this is not helping your case,” she said. Her eyes were full, the candle flames blurring.

Jesse exhaled and his body relaxed, his hands dropping open again. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Can you just go? I just want to be alone.”

He began to reach for her. “I just feel like we really should—”

“Just go, Jesse,” she snapped.

And he went.

\--

Dina distracts Ellie with a joke, and when the laughter fades, they sit for a moment in peaceful silence. Ellie’s eyes linger on her, then she lies her head in her arms against the back of the chair, her gaze aimed out the wall of windows. Dina lays her hand on the strap of Ellie’s backpack, tethering herself to it.

Dina has always loved the silences the most, with Ellie. In these quiet moments, these pauses, Dina senses the tension of promise, like rainclouds gathering. Dina never questioned why the rain never came. Now, she realizes: Each pause ends with Ellie looking away, turning away, drawing back or touching her face or making some stupid joke.

It’s hard not to wonder what it would be like, otherwise. What it would mean to let the clouds form. How do the trees, the flowers feel when the sky opens? What relief or joy did it bring when the rains came to the desert, soaking the thirsty earth?

\--

For so long, Dina has worked on keeping people at a distance. With Jesse, it might have worked too well.

With Ellie, it hasn’t worked at all.

Placing the two of them side by side, considering them in the same way, it doesn’t even feel like a contest. Two years ago, when Ellie didn’t show up for her first day on paired patrols, Jesse barely talked Dina out of tearing off after her, even though they were hardly friends, hardly speaking. The force of that drive had taken her by surprise. She hadn’t felt so fiercely protective in a lifetime.

Certainly not of Jesse.

Ellie comes up beside her and gives her a curious glance. Dina realizes she’s slowed, holding Japan’s reins back, clutched tight in her fist.

Dina looks at her, at that quiet, melancholy smile, that bruised-heart look. She senses it again, a soft, strong undercurrent, a steady trickle of groundwater.

“I think I’m gonna break it off with Jesse,” Dina says.

A tiny crease forms between Ellie’s eyebrows, the faintest detectable frown. Ellie avoids her eyes and says, very evenly, “Oh yeah?”

Dina watches her, thinking of the thousands of times she came so close without realizing. All the times she took Ellie’s arm, lean and long inside her coats and sweatshirts, tucking their elbows together. All those times she nestled up against her, finding the one soft place on her bony shoulder, calming instantly like a lizard on a warm stone. All those times they paused face to face, close together, the air thick between them, gathering up into a stormcloud ready to open.

Ellie looks around, then away, touching her ear.

Dina bites her lips, feeling that undercurrent, that tow toward Ellie. She’s barely even thinking of Jesse, now. It’s a different question she answers for herself when she says, “Yeah. I think I am.”

\--

Inside, in the field, in the stable, Dina finds herself watching Ellie. Over and over, Ellie looks at her and smiles in this natural, instinctive way, then seems to shutter that instinct, to correct herself and dampen it.

When Jesse comes over, Dina turns to him for just a moment, and by the time she looks back, Ellie’s already heading to the gate, her backpack heavy across her slumped shoulders.

“How was the route?” Jesse asks. He touches Dina’s arm lightly.

Dina watches Ellie hurdle the fence and disappear down the street.

“We need to talk.”

\--

Jesse tries four times during the walk to initiate a discussion, and like always, Dina has to shush him each time. “I told you,” she says the fourth time, her patience thinning, “I don’t want to talk about this out here.”

Before the door even closes, Jesse starts in again. “Like I was saying, I’m really sorry about—”

“Jesse,” Dina says, cutting him off. “I think we should break up.”

He rubs his neck. “I’m serious, I know I fucked up, and I’m sorry. I get it, I get they’re expired, I get the precautions—”

Dina shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I mean it this time.”

Jesse pauses and looks at her, searching. “You mean what?” he asks. He senses something is different.

“We’re done,” she says, firm, final. She watches him frown, his brows tipped up in confusion, and then slowly slacken.

“Dina, can we not do this?” he tries, gesturing vaguely. “It was just one little fight. I know we—”

“It’s not about last night,” Dina says. “We keep going in circles, Jesse. Why do you think that is?”

Jesse frowns. He opens his mouth, then edits himself, schooling his expression into something less harsh. “Why don’t you tell me?” he says.

Dina glares back. “It’s because there’s nowhere left to go, for us,” she says. “We’re at the end of the line already. This is as much as we’ll ever be.”

Slowly, Jesse’s face falls, the anger eroding to show the hurt beneath.

“We’re already done,” Dina says, more gently. She steps closer and grips his arm. “It’s over.”

Jesse looks away, at the floor. Even hurting, he stands still, his body calm and sure. “You were never gonna say it back, were you,” he says softly.

Dina releases him. He meets her eyes for just a second before she looks down, clasping her hands together. “No,” she says quietly. “I don’t think so.”

“I would wait, you know,” he says. “Maybe that could change. I would wait.”

Dina looks up at him. Hope and pain mix together on his face. “Jesse,” she sighs, gathering strength to say it again.

“Okay,” he relents. He lifts his hands in a gentle surrender. “I get it. I’ll—get out of your face, I guess.”

And this time, before she has to ask him to, Jesse just leaves.

\--

The first time Jesse said it, Dina’s reflex was to sneer. “You’re so fucking corny,” she said, rolling away and sitting up. Sometimes Jesse was so soft, it shook her. Getting too soft was dangerous.

“It’s not corny,” he said indignantly. He sat up and pulled the sheets over his lap. “That’s kind of fucked up to say.”

Dina shoved herself off the bed and grabbed up her clothes. “What were you expecting?” she said. When she glanced at him, she saw the shot had hit its mark.

“I mean, I thought maybe you’d say it back,” he said.

\--

The second time he said it, it was a warmer moment. They were the last two at the bonfire, watching the flames burn down to embers, the dark night crowding in around them as they sat close together. The cups and bottles could wait another hour. Jesse held a blanket around their shoulders.

“I really think I’m in love with you,” he said, more tentatively this time. He tried to keep his eyes away, on the fire, but when she turned to him, he couldn’t help but look.

Dina bit the inside of her cheek. Being with Jesse felt calm and warm, and easy, most of the time. His arm was heavy and comforting over her shoulders, clutching the blanket around her. His smile was gentle and caring.

Was this it?

Was this love?

\--

At Ellie’s door, Dina finds herself buzzing with nervous energy, her stomach fluttering, her hand shaking. Even her knock sounds faster and harder than usual, matching the pulse beating in her throat.

“Come in,” Ellie calls from inside.

Dina enters and finds Ellie sitting on the bed, one leg tucked under her in a graceful line, her upper body hunched protectively over her guitar as her fingers curl around its neck.

It’s strange, now, to think she never noticed this: herself, noticing Ellie. Never thought twice when her eyes swept up and down on their own. Never questioned the gentle pull of her presence. Never connected these dots.

Dina looks away, feeling suddenly shy. She steps over to the stove to warm her hands. “Fucking cold as balls out there,” she offers, stalling.

Ellie snorts and drags her thumb across the strings. “If you say so.”

Dina pivots toward her and unsnaps her coat. Ellie sits, still looking at the floor, still reserved, still mournful and lonely beneath everything. It’s strange to think things have always been like this, just exactly like this, and Dina never even knew.

As Dina slides her coat from her shoulders, she bites her lip and prepares to break the spell that has held them in place for so long. “I talked to Jesse,” she says, and she sees the little frown Ellie tries to hide.

But then, Ellie doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look up. She just rubs her thumb and forefinger together, hovering over the strings.

Dina falters, trying to find her mistake, to correct her calculations. Surely Jesse was the problem, the source of their impasse, their stasis. So why is Ellie still just sitting there?

Instead of joining Ellie on the bed, Dina drops her coat on the couch and sits beside it, her nerve lost. “What’re you up to?” she asks, hoping to draw Ellie back out. She feels far away.

Ellie looks up and gives her a tiny smile, just a curl of the lip. She strums a full chord, the music dissipating the tension, loosening the air. “Tap dancing.”

“Tap dancing, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says, a little smug. Her fingers dance across the pick guard. “Thought I needed a new hobby.”

Dina tries to imagine Ellie doing her terrible line dancing, but with tap shoes instead of sneakers. It’s hard not to laugh. “And _you_ picked dancing? Brave.”

“That’s me,” Ellie says, flicking the wood to make a loud, shapeless note. “Brave ass motherfucker.”

Her tone is too sad to be convincing. “Okay, tough guy,” Dina says, bending over to pull her shoes off. “Are you going to play me something? Or keep up the tap dancing cover story?”

Ellie bites her lip and fidgets. “What do you want me to play?”

Dina considers for a moment. How best to nudge Ellie forward? “Play my song,” she says, and the words summon that flutter again, like the rustling of leaves. “The one from the tape I gave you.”

For a long moment, Ellie just stares at her, seeming to struggle with something. When she looks away, she tilts her head, too, and pays careful attention as she lines her fingers up on each string.

As she starts to play, Dina finds herself sitting forward, pulled in. She’s always loved watching Ellie play, but tonight, something about it feels different. Tonight, the rainclouds have already gathered, and each note resonates around them as if trying to shake the drops loose.

And then, Ellie starts to sing.

\--

The way Ellie played it, so slow and melancholy, Dina found herself hearing the words as if for the first time. In the version on the tape, the words had been secondary to the beat and the music. The song had sounded cheerful and upbeat, maybe a nice change of pace from the sad songs Ellie usually practiced.

But slower, softer, in the dramatic glow of the bonfire, Dina found the song left her spellbound. Her eyes kept circling back to Ellie’s hands, her fingers careful on the frets and strings, practiced and strong. It felt like Ellie was singing just to her, alone in the firelight, in the quiet, held breath of evening.

When the song ended, Ellie finally looked right at her. Her eyes were light and washed out by the fire, and they flashed with something that looked almost like fear.

Dina felt it then, stronger than she ever had: a tug, like a current, like a river toward a waterfall, like floodwater across a plain.

Ellie stood abruptly.

Helpless against that pull, that gravity, Dina stood and followed.

When Dina caught up, her hand reached out on its own, pressing flat between Ellie’s shoulder blades, the shape of the hamsa. “That was so good,” Dina breathed, her body moving closer to Ellie, curling around her like smoke. “That was the song from my tape.”

Ellie felt rigid and unyielding as she leaned against the woodpile, looking only at her hands. “Yeah,” she said after a beat, her voice rough. “Well, I promised I’d play you one.”

Suddenly, more than anything, Dina wanted to see her face. She wanted to see Ellie’s eyes. She gripped her arm, pulling gently, trying to turn her. “Ellie.”

Slowly, Ellie turned toward her, and though her face was hard, her eyes were soft and deep. She looked almost frightened.

For one absurd, powerful moment, it felt like they were about to kiss.

Dina felt it coming: felt her smile slacken; felt her breath catch.

Then Ellie turned away.


	2. the cruelest weather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titles are sampled from a [poem](https://medium.com/@christyannmartine/flower-in-the-desert-a0196f73e999) by Christy Ann Martine.
> 
> Jackson Days companion chapters (listed in chronological order, not as they appear here): [9](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61860145), [10](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61953595), [12](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62023435), [15](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62211340), [23](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62839579)
> 
> tw there is a very vague, blink-and-you'll-miss-it allusion to sexual assault.

“Tomorrow, you can light the candles,” Talia said, like it was a special treat and not a burden, a challenge.

“That’s okay,” Dina said. Her voice was small, as small as the three little flames, bouncing off the broken mirror and the broken tiles on the walls.

“You should,” Talia said. “Tomorrow is your day, too. You’ll be a woman in the eyes of God.”

“I don’t want to light the fucking candles,” Dina snapped.

It would have made their mother flinch, but Talia was different. Dina felt Talia’s eyes on her, dark and thoughtful, shielded by her thick glasses.

“We can say it together, then,” Talia offered instead.

\--

After the warmth of Ellie’s apartment, and the warmth of Dina’s cheeks, the icy winter air feels like a relief. It shocks Dina back to reality.

Even as the music drew her in, Dina had found herself rooted to her seat. The space between her and Ellie seemed dangerous and wide, a journey into the unknown. The air felt thick, stirred by the strings and Ellie’s soft, thready voice, and instead of rainclouds Dina sensed stormclouds, dark and almost threatening.

When the song ended, Dina excused herself and fled, here, out into the cold, her hand still clenching the doorknob.

Is it fear or anticipation running through her, charging her heart against her ribs, shortening her breaths?

What will happen when the clouds break?

\--

Ever since she joined paired patrol, Dina had been showing up early for her shifts. It wasn’t explicitly to avoid Ellie, but it wasn’t _not_ , either.

Every time she saw Ellie now, all she could think about was her and Cat. The two of them making out at the lake, or the bonfire, their smiles pressed together, Cat’s fingers in Ellie’s hair, clutching her t-shirt. That was all she’d seen, but it was so easy to play it out further. Cat crushed against the back of Ellie’s front door, bunching Ellie’s shirt up. Ellie pressing Cat down flat onto the bed, leaning over her. Ellie smiling that smile Dina had never seen before or since, a smile she seemed to show only for Cat. And then…

It hurt, to think about it.

It was stupid that it hurt. There was no reason for it to. And yet it did, it hurt to think about them together; and yet Dina couldn’t think about anything else, once she started.

So, she hadn’t really seen Ellie lately, or really at all since the bonfire.

That hurt, too.

This morning wasn’t different, for not seeing Ellie. What was different was Jesse and Maria huddled by the half-finished assignment board this close to start of shift, anxiety clouding the air above them.

“What’s going on?” Dina asked Jesse when she got near.

He hesitated and glanced at Maria. Probably he wasn’t supposed to tell her. But Jesse was soft on Dina, so he did.

“Ellie’s gone.”

\--

Dina followed the trail around behind a strip mall. The sun was just beginning to show, and the breeze cut through her thin jacket and made her shiver. In the back, cars rotted in place on a patch of crumbling asphalt, their dusty windows reflecting gold sunlight and dull tan desert. Beyond the cars was a rusted metal dumpster, and behind it, Dina spotted a prone figure and felt the dread in her belly turn solid and leaden.

First, she crouched at the rear panel of one of the cars and raised her rifle, using the sight to check for movement or signs of life. She watched for a long time, even after she was sure she was alone. It felt hard to move.

Finally, her aching knees and arms forced her up. Her gait felt uneven and staggered as she crossed the short distance. Some part of her still hoped, despite everything, that she would be wrong—but she wasn’t, of course. The figure on the ground was Talia, dead as any body she’d found, dead as any man she’d killed.

As Dina turned Talia onto her back, tears somehow didn’t come. Instead her throat got dry and tight, so tight it felt almost closed up, so tight each breath in and out felt difficult and strained. She focused on that, taking two breaths in, one breath out, like Talia used to do, when she was alive, before she was dead.

Dina poured a precious gulp from her canteen onto a rag, and she gently removed Talia’s shattered glasses and wiped the blood from her face and hair. She worked Talia’s jeans and bloody shirt back into place, the body rigid and resistant. Talia’s backpack and weapons were gone. There was no trace of her killers.

After a bit of searching, Dina found a shovel and a wooden pallet at the far end of the strip mall, where some poor fool had started some repair or renovation on his doomed little store in this doomed little mall. She loaded Talia onto the pallet and dragged it out of the lot and into the barren sandy field beside it, and she began to dig.

They should have been back in the hotel room, Dina reading hesitantly aloud, Talia encouraging her. Instead, Dina turned the earth, and Talia stared unseeing at the sky.

They didn’t have a Torah anymore, since they set out into the desert on their own, and Talia’s bag was gone, with her calendar and her notebook full of prayers and passages she had copied patiently onto the page. Without the notebook, Dina was sure she couldn’t do it. Yet, as she dug, she began to softly recite what she remembered of what Talia had taught her.

Talia had lamented that Dina couldn’t have a proper ceremony, as Talia had, with the support of a congregation and a community, with a Torah and a celebration and all the rest. Dina hadn’t cared so much, had been young when Talia became a bat mitzvah, and she never had Talia’s talent with Hebrew anyway.

But now, in these last hours with Talia, with her body, Dina found she remembered more than she thought she did. For once, praying made her feel better. It made her feel powerful, connected in a new way to their ancestors, to their parents, and to Talia, here beside her, her cuts cleaned and her eyes pushed shut, her glasses frames warped and empty over her face.

At some point, a few feet deep into the grave, Dina lost the thread of the recitation, so she flowed directly into what she remembered of the haftarah. At the end, she knew she was supposed to give Talia a sermon, the only part they hadn’t prepared together. It was supposed to be a surprise; a special moment, just for them.

Instead, Dina said, “I guess I’m a woman now, Talia,” and the tears finally began to flow. She choked, her vision blurring, her eyes fixed on Talia, her body empty and stiff and foreign.

Dina wiped her eyes and swore, aloud, that she would find Talia’s killers, that she would make them pay.

To herself, in silence, she swore she would never care for anyone this much again. No one else would ever be this close, this important. Her father. Her mother. Talia. Talia would be the end.

She would dig no more graves herself.

\--

Dina spends most of the night awake, tossing and turning, pulling blankets on and off. The room is too cold; her body, too hot. She pictures Ellie as she closed the door between them, still as a stone on the bed, so deeply sad and lonely it seemed to tint the air in the room—yet unwilling to ask Dina to stay.

She wonders what happened when the door shut behind her. Did Ellie rise for a moment, reaching for the door, Dina’s name in her throat? Or did she tip her chin back down, switch her hand on the strings, and play some new melody, something sadder or sweeter?

Is Dina one of the troubles Ellie tells that old guitar?

Is that what Dina will become, if she lets Ellie in? Soft and sad underneath?

\--

It was still early enough, to give Ellie a real present. Dina had already wrapped it, months ago, after she found the cassette on group patrol and spirited it into her bag without Ellie seeing. It was there, burrowed at the bottom of the dresser drawer she was staring at.

“I feel bad she had to ask, honestly,” Jesse was saying. He lounged confidently beside her, one arm behind his head, his legs bare and crossed at the ankle. “I thought she knew me better than that. I mean, it’s not like it was a surprise, you know?”

Dina stared at the drawer, envisioning the cassette, wrapped carefully in brown paper. She said nothing.

“Anyway, I’m happy for them,” Jesse said, shuffling his feet around the way he did when he wanted Dina’s attention without pointing out he had lost it. “Ellie seems happier, anyway.”

The mention of Ellie’s name broke Dina’s concentration on the tape. Instead, she saw Ellie and Cat at the lake. Cat’s hand in Ellie’s shirt. Ellie’s sweet, soft smile against Cat’s mouth.

Without realizing, Dina said it aloud: “Do you think they’re in love?”

Jesse went still. After a too-long pause, he forced a laugh and said, “How should I know?”

\--

Maria put a hand on Jesse’s arm immediately. “She’s not _gone_ ,” Maria corrected. “Joel took her on a surprise camping trip. He just forgot to tell me until they headed out this morning.”

Jesse looked at Maria and Dina looked at Jesse. She could tell he didn’t really believe her. Dina didn’t really believe her, either.

“Where’d they go?” Dina asked, as normally as she could manage.

Maria shrugged. “He didn’t say. I wouldn’t worry, though.”

Maria sure sounded worried.

Dina frowned, retrieved Japan from Amara, and led him out to the gate at a half jog. She threw the rifle over her shoulder without even checking the slide.

Jesse caught her just as she put one foot up in the stirrup, her mind far outside Jackson, envisioning Ellie and Shimmer and trying to guess their direction.

“Dina,” he said, his hand an anchor on her arm, weighing her down. “You can’t go after her.”

“The fuck I can’t,” she said, shaking him off.

He caught her again and glared at her. “You _can’t_ ,” he said again. “We don’t even know where they went. And they could be a hundred miles away by now. And Joel’s with her. They’ll be fine.”

Dina stared at him and he felt like a total stranger. No one had ever known her so little.

She shook him off again and got up into the saddle.

“Where are you even gonna go? With one day’s supplies?”

When she looked down, he didn’t look as angry as he had a second before. He looked scared; worried.

The Ellie in her mind was surrounded by darkness, her destination unknown, unknowable. Her horse’s tracks would be muddled with tracks from every patrol, every route and trail.

Dina faltered.

How could she follow?

\--

Dina wakes to sunlight too strong and too wide across the floor. For a second she startles, thinking she’s running horribly late, but then she realizes she isn’t scheduled today, that she turned her alarm off on purpose.

Her eyes settle on the ceiling again, on the faint fissures in the paint. Her thoughts slip back to Ellie. Ellie against the icy blue sky, holding the table against the snow, watching her expectantly. Ellie on the chairlift, thinking of Dina instead of the beautiful valley, sketching her with practiced care.

So Ellie is in love with her.

What about Dina?

\--

The knock sounded hesitant, the pattern uneven, and Dina braced herself to tell Jesse off again when she opened the door and found Ellie standing there instead.

“Ellie.” She blinked. “What are you doing here?”

Normally, she’d expect Ellie to be with Cat, but ever since Ellie got back, they’d been weird together. Dina had been prepared to keep her cool about them, to try harder to wrangle whatever it was that bothered her so much, but it hadn’t proved necessary.

Ellie fidgeted, shifting her body, scratching her ear. “I… uh…” She looked to the side absently. Her eyes were light and glassy. Dina caught a whiff of alcohol.

“Are you drunk?” she asked in surprise.

“That… is possible,” she said, her words slipping into each other.

Ellie, drunk, in the middle of the afternoon, on a worknight? Dina carefully tamped down her alarm and invited Ellie inside.

She turned back to the stove. She had just enough to split it into two servings. As she dished it up, she glanced over her shoulder and realized Ellie was much drunker than she thought. Her posture was canted to one side; she dipped the pad of her finger into the cupped wax at the top of the shammash, her face just inches away, staring intently.

“Quit fingering my candles and come sit down,” Dina said, harsher than she meant to. She felt a little shaken, seeing Ellie like this. She hadn’t ever really seen her like this.

Ellie shuffled over, her face and ears glowing red. Her left sleeve was down, but the right was pushed up to her elbow, revealing the ridged black edges of a fresh tattoo.

“Oh, you’re the best,” Ellie mumbled as she dropped to the floor and crowded the bowl against her chest.

Dina lowered herself to the sofa, taking in Ellie’s swollen eyes and mussed hair. It looked like maybe she’d been crying, before or after the drinking. Ellie ate like someone who’d just gotten to Jackson, her belly empty and hungry.

Finally, Dina sensed Ellie’s guard drop a little. “So, you here to tell me what’s going on with you?” she tried.

Ellie looked up at her, suddenly wary and alert. “No.”

It wasn’t until later, steering Ellie down the street, that Dina realized what had happened. Ellie stopped cold in her tracks, dragging Dina to a sudden halt. When she turned back, Ellie had a strange, sorry look on her face, a buried, bone-deep sadness suddenly broken to the surface, like she couldn’t keep it down anymore.

Dina turned to follow Ellie’s eyes and there was Cat, at the far end by the corner. Cat stared directly at Dina, her face unreadable.

Dina turned back to Ellie and stepped in front of her. “Ellie?” she said gently, trying to bring her back. Tears slipped down Ellie’s cheeks. Without thinking, Dina reached up to brush them off. Ellie’s face was warm under her hands.

Ellie’s eyes swam, focused on the air between them, on something only she could see.

Watching her struggle, feeling the tremors and ripples across her face, Dina felt that pull, stronger than before. Like the morning Ellie left.

“Come on,” she said, her hand lingering on Ellie’s cheek. “We’re almost there.”

\--

As each song played, Dina held her eyelids closed and imagined Ellie, cradling her guitar, drawing out the words and melody with her rough voice. Ellie pressed against her side, her body warm through their cold, wet clothes. Dina could feel her arm twitch as her fingers tapped the Walkman to the beat.

When the last song finished, they lay still a while, listening to the quiet reels turning in one ear and the peaceful noises of the lake in the other. Time felt slow, malleable. Dina had never felt so tempted to describe something as _perfect_.

Dina let her eyes open slowly, taking in the deep blue of the sky, the wisps of clouds. She tilted her head down to see Ellie’s hands, folded loosely over the Walkman on her belly, her fingers still tapping and twisting together. She thought about those hands on a guitar, on a rifle, dragging a pen across a page. If they touched her, would they feel as strong and sure as they looked?

Dina blinked hard and pushed up onto her elbow. Now her whole side pressed against Ellie, soaking in that warmth, feeling each breath expand and contract. Ellie looked up at her blankly, softly. Her eyes were light in the sun, and they flicked across Dina’s face over and over and over.

“So?” Dina asked. It felt like they were floating.

Ellie stared at her. “Um, I really like it,” she said finally. “Thanks, Dina.”

“No, doofus,” Dina said, and it sounded almost eager out loud, but she didn’t care. “ _So_ , are you gonna play any of these for me, sometime?”

Ellie frowned, just slightly, almost imperceptibly. A faint crease showed between her eyebrows; her eyes narrowed and her lips parted as if to say more—then closed again. Time felt slow and easy around them.

“I have to figure out how to play them,” Ellie said uncertainly. “And then get good enough to play them for you.”

More than anything, Dina wanted to hear Ellie play, right then, right in that moment. Instead she held herself still. She let herself enjoy the wanting; let herself soak in the anticipation and the promise. She could feel that humid tension building, those rainclouds gathering.

“We have plenty of time,” Dina said.

Ellie stared at her for a long moment, then bit her lip and turned away.

\--

Like any day off when Ellie and Jesse are both working, Dina takes a lazy, luxurious shower, spends time washing her face and teeth and putting her hair up, and cooks herself a proper breakfast. She even treats herself to using some of the rarer spices, the ones she hoards for special occasions and trades for whenever they turn up in town.

She eats in bed, leaning against the headboard and looking at the sunlight in the window, and imagines Ellie sitting beside her, staring and blushing and trying not to show how the spicy food dries her throat and heats her ears. She imagines Ellie taking the dishes to the sink and coming back and bending down to kiss her. She imagines the taste of that soft, sweet smile.

In a way, that’s really when the dam breaks; when she realizes she’s already too far gone. Because when she imagines it, when she tries to decide what Ellie might do, and how it might feel, she almost leaps to her feet right then, almost tears out of the house and down to the stable and onto her horse and out onto the trail to find Ellie right this second and find out for real.

The drive is powerful, immeasurable, not a slide down a hill but a plunge off a cliff, fast and hard and unstoppable. The pull is as strong as the fear, the two entwined, inextricable.

But there’s no turning back, now.

\--

Dina sat on the bed for hours, staring at the bracelet in her hands. The room grew darker and gloomier. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, or in what order. She had never needed to decide these things herself.

Her hands were blistered and bloody, ugly and horrible behind the delicate beauty of Talia’s bracelet. She was careful to keep the leather straps away from the oozing cuts. She heard a voice and realized she was whispering aloud, repeating Talia’s prayer for the dead, over and over under her breath. She felt a tickle on her chin and realized she was crying.

It was almost too dark to see, now. It was hard to tell with the blankets over the windows, but Dina suspected it was nighttime already.

She squeezed her eyes shut and imagined Talia sitting beside her, touching her glasses and urging, _You can light the candles. You should. It’s your day, too._

Dina dragged herself to the bathroom and startled when she caught her dim reflection in the mirror. Her face was barely visible, just a pale shadow, like the glimpse of a ghost. She dropped the bracelet on the counter and yanked her jacket off, then tucked it over the top corners of the mirror to cover it, straining on her tip-toes to reach.

She stood, shaking, staring at the bottom three inches of the mirror, too low to be hidden by the jacket. Was that okay? Was that allowed?

Tears burned her eyes.

“I can’t do this without you,” she said to the dark reflection of her elbows and waist. “Why did you leave me?”

The ghost offered no answer.

\--

Jesse thought the whole thing was overly dramatic, and said as much every time it came up, but it felt like a splinter Dina couldn’t get loose.

“I’m just saying,” she said, unable to drop it. “I don’t get it. I don’t even know when they got that close.”

Jesse took a bite of his apple and wiped his mouth with his wrist. “Probably sometime over the past, like, two years,” he said, clearly bored already.

“Yeah, but it felt different yesterday,” Dina pushed.

“I was there too, and it really did not feel even a little bit different,” Jesse said again.

Jesse was wrong. Ellie had been grouchy, probably still sore about the stunt with the bucket of water after patrol. But it was Cat who had really seemed different. All through dinner, she sat angled toward Ellie, her eyes on Ellie first always. She touched Ellie’s back at one point, and Ellie didn’t even react. And then the way Cat had agreed to go to the lake—forceful, direct, words Dina would never ascribe to Cat normally.

Jesse offered the second half of the apple and she took it, looking unhappily at the wide, flat marks from his top front teeth.

“You’ll see this afternoon,” Jesse said when she didn’t say any more. “We’ll all go for a nice swim and you’ll see it’s all fine.”

\--

Once Dina starts thinking about it, she can’t stop. She scrubs her clothes on the washboard and imagines Ellie coming up behind her, touching her shoulder, whispering in her ear. She preps and cans veggies in the kitchen and imagines Ellie interrupting her, turning her, taking her face in her hands. She cleans the dishes and counters and sinks and imagines herself at the lake with Ellie this time, fisting her hand in Ellie’s shirt, feeling Ellie’s soft, sweet smile against her mouth.

It feels scary, it does, but the pull is so much stronger.

When the day finally wears into afternoon, Dina spares herself another once-over in the mirror, something she almost never does. She leaves for the stable at a brisk walk, still closing the snaps on her coat, and she has to force herself to slow down, to measure out her steps with more patience and caution.

At the gate, she realizes she’s too early. No one’s back yet. She lingers at the fence, flipping her collar up against the cold, tucking her gloves down snugly against the webs of her fingers.

The big gate creeps open. Dina squints at the figures trotting up the path until she can make out Jesse and Chad, riding side by side.

Jesse. Dina bites her lip. They’ve been broken up for barely a day.

Guilt washes over her, cold and stinging.

Can she really do this to him so soon, after everything they’ve been through together? Dump him one day and pick up his best friend, the next? Kick him when he’s already down?

She chews her lip. Maybe she should wait. She can wait, right? Just a day or two?

As if her guilt is broadcasting, Jesse catches sight of her and hands his reins off to Chad. Dina swears under her breath and shoves her hands in her pockets as he walks toward her.

“Hey,” Jesse says, trying not to sound hopeful—and failing.

Dina rolls her eyes. “Hey,” she says back as flatly as she can.

His face falls, just a little. “You’re not here for me,” he realizes out loud.

Dina just looks at him. After the momentum she built up all day, talking to him makes her feel like she’s moving backward.

When Jesse finally retreats, finally taps his fist against the fence and backs away with a sad shake of his head, Dina checks behind him and feels herself lighten at the sight of Ellie, riding up through the gate, turning back to say something to Astrid. Ellie dismounts and even from this far away, Dina can tell the moment Ellie sees her, because Ellie pauses in place for a second, like she got the breath knocked out of her.

Ellie ducks her head, then waves. Dina waves back and watches Ellie stutter back and forth, looking toward her and then away, and then turning as Astrid says something and starts leading the way into the stable.

Dina clutches the fence. How did she go so long without seeing it? It seems so clear now, so obvious and plain.

A few minutes later, Ellie trots out of the stable, slinging her bag over one shoulder. “What’s up?” she asks as she walks over. She checks behind her briefly, as if Dina might be waiting for someone else.

Dina feels that pull, gentle and nagging. But the pull can wait.

“Got bored,” Dina says, taking in Ellie’s pink cheeks and ears, her guarded eyes. “Wanna hang out?”

Ellie tugs the strap of her bag. “Sure.”

\--

Out of habit, Dina links their arms as soon as Ellie joins her in the road. She touches Ellie’s arm with her other hand, squeezing it, feeling the shape of muscle and bone below the layers of Ellie’s clothes. The nearness charges her pulse in her ears. She imagines slipping her hand into Ellie’s coat pocket and lacing their fingers together.

“How was your day off?” Ellie asks.

“It was really nice,” Dina says, watching their feet move in sync through the snow. “I like having time alone to think, sometimes.”

For a second, she hopes Ellie will ask what she was thinking about, all day at home by herself.

Instead, Ellie just says, “Yeah.”

\--

At Ellie’s place, Dina helps herself to the kitchen right away, pulling out potatoes and dried meat and digging out a frying pan. She hears Ellie behind her, shedding her coat and shoes, then coming up beside her to set the backpack on the desk.

Again, Dina senses the journal nestled in the bag, keeping its secrets. She thinks of Ellie sitting here alone in the glow of the lamp and scratching a pen across the page.

Ellie turns and leans her hip against the desk, drawing Dina back to the present. Ellie looks easy and loose, her arms crossed casually, her expression calm and soft. “What’re you making?”

“Figured you could use something real to eat,” Dina says. She looks back down and starts dicing the potatoes. “And then we’re going on an adventure.”

“An adventure, huh?” Ellie says. Dina can hear the smile in her voice, and it makes Dina smile, too.

Dina can feel the beginning of that energy between them, brewing and building, slow and steady.

She lifts the cutting board and skids the potatoes into the pan. “Yep. If you’re good.”

\--

“Sorry,” Jesse said again, “I didn’t mean—and usually you, like, tell me—”

“It’s fine,” Dina said again, burying the guilt, burying the fear, burying his words burning in her brain, _I love you, I love you_.

Sometimes she hated it, the way he looked so earnest, so open and genuine when he said it. Sometimes she cherished it, wanted so badly to love it that for a moment it felt like she did.

Each time he said it, she felt compelled to give him something in return. So, though she couldn’t give him what he really wanted, couldn’t say it back, each time he said it, she couldn’t bring herself to push him away either.

And then afterward, every time, she worried. She regretted. She feared.

\--

“No, wear boots, for real,” Dina says.

Ellie stops, bent over the shoe rack. She gives Dina a cheeky grin. “Oh, _for real_ , this time?”

Dina smirks. “You know, maybe I won’t bring you on my adventure, after all.”

Ellie shakes her head, but she grabs the boots and sits back against the table by the door. “Please. Who else are you gonna bring?”

“Candice,” Dina says, teasing. “Chad. Andre.”

“Fuck off,” Ellie says as she ties her laces. “Where are we going, anyway?”

Dina stands up with her bag and pulls her gloves on. “You’ll see.”

\--

Maybe it was the weed. Maybe it was the solitude, or the serenity of the cool flat lake, the whispering trees, the pure gold of the sun. Maybe it was Ellie’s eyes, swirling dark like the lake water, then light like the sky.

Maybe it had been waiting too long to be said.

Dina looked down at her bracelet, at Talia’s bracelet, the one she put on this morning without considering why, and she said, “I would’ve gone with you, you know.”

There was a pause, quiet enough to hear the water lapping at the shore, the quiet rustle of leaves.

“With me where?”

Ellie looked at her earnestly, solemnly. Her eyebrows bunched together in confusion.

“Wherever you went, two years ago,” Dina said, the words a heavy weight finally placed on the ground. Her eyes fell back to her wrist, to her fingers worrying the leather strap. “I mean, I know we were like… I know why you didn’t tell me. But I would’ve gone anyway, if you asked me.”

“Oh.” Ellie looked away from her, out at the lake and the trees and down at her lap. “No, Dina, I—It was—It was something I had to do on my own.”

Dina lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I get it. I’m just saying. Sometimes I think… It feels like you think you’re way out there on your own, you know? And you’re not.”

Ellie met her eyes, almost tentative. For once she looked soft; vulnerable. Fear flashed in her eyes.

“I mean,” Dina continued, “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m your friend, okay? I’m here for you. Or there for you. Wherever you’re going.”

Ellie stared at her for a long moment, and her face began to change.

\--

Dark is already falling when they reach the end of the trail. Dina slows as the path levels out and feels Ellie come to a stop beside her, leaving space between them.

Ridges of ice on the lake catch the dim light of the crescent moon. A thin layer of snow coats the flats of the surface, the old dock out around the bend, and the logs and campfire circle in front of them.

Despite the darkness and cold and snow, for a second Dina thinks of that day last summer, when she took the whole trail at a run to catch up to Ellie, out on the dock alone with her guitar.

How did she never notice?

“It’s beautiful,” Ellie says. Her voice is deep and rough.

“Come on,” Dina says, and she lets herself take Ellie’s hand. Lets herself enjoy the little thrill that shoots up her arm.

Dina pauses by one of the logs to sweep the snow off and set her backpack down. Ellie copies her, smiling curiously, following her lead. Dina takes her hand again and leads her out to the ice.

Their hands fit so nicely together.

Dina steps carefully off the shore. Ellie suddenly grips her hand tighter and grabs her arm as well. “Dina—”

“It’s fine,” Dina says with a laugh. The ice holds under her boot, the snow helping her traction, and she cautiously brings her other foot out onto the water.

Ellie grips tighter, so tight Dina can feel each of her fingers pressing through the coat.

“See?” Dina shuffles her feet a little. “Relax.”

When their eyes meet, Dina bites her lip. Ellie looks at her, her eyes dark in the nighttime, her face worried and heartsick and soft as a day-old bruise.

Dina wets her lips. “Let go,” she says gently.

Ellie looks down at her hands and slowly works them loose.

Dina drags her eyes down and slides along the ice, careful to keep her feet close together underneath her. When she’s a ways out from the shore, she turns and finds Ellie unmoved, watching her, love lurking beneath the surface like the water beneath the frozen lake.

She imagines Ellie stepping out onto the ice, marching straight up to her and cupping her cold cheeks, pressing their chapped lips together. Her heart races against her chest, suddenly eager, suddenly longing.

“Come out here,” Dina calls across the distance.

Ellie looks at her, frozen.

“Chickenshit,” Dina adds.

Ellie’s face breaks with a smile. She shakes her head, then charges onto the ice, slipping on the second step. She falls hard on her side and skids and says “Oh, fuck” and bowls directly into Dina, who keeps her feet just long enough to slip, herself, and land heavy on Ellie’s middle.

Ellie makes a soft _oof_ and winces and Dina laughs and Ellie laughs and Dina pushes herself up, her hand landing accidentally high on Ellie’s leg, catching the hard bone of her hip.

“Sorry,” they say at once, and laugh again, and Dina sits back on her butt on the cold, hard ice and looks at Ellie, at her red cheeks, her mussed hair.

“Are you okay?” Dina asks.

Ellie rubs her side where she fell. “All good,” Ellie says, “just my pride,” and Dina wants to kiss her, so badly.

Dina leans forward onto her hands, moving into Ellie’s space. Energy gathers between them, anticipation, promise.

“Ellie,” Dina starts to say, and she feels herself slipping, feels herself losing track of why she promised herself she would wait a day, at least one day.

Ellie’s smile dims like a snuffed candle and she climbs to her feet. She offers a hand down to Dina, her head haloed in starlight, her eyes dark and deep as the black sky.

“Come on,” Ellie says, her gloved hand hovering between them.

Dina bites the inside of her cheek and takes Ellie’s hand. Ellie pulls her up faster than she expects, lifting her with easy strength, her boots shifting in the powdery snow. Dina grasps Ellie’s shoulder for balance, landing almost in her arms before she steadies herself.

A shy smile curls her lips. She can feel Ellie’s muscle and bone under her hand, through the glove and the coat and the sweater. For a second, she lets her fingers squeeze tighter; she lets herself look at Ellie up close, at her nervous little frown, at her lips pressed in a line, at the hot cloud of her breath coalescing in the air.

The air feels dense between them, around them: the promise of a storm coming.

Dina sets back on her heels and inserts space between them, feeling that flutter inside her, the flurry of animals taking cover, of plants unfurling their leaves in expectation.

Fear is there, too. Fear the rain will be too strong. Fear the flood will wash her away.

But she’s not sure how long she can keep holding back, now that she knows what’s coming.


	3. every drop of rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-typical violence in this chapter.
> 
> Jackson companion chapters: [9](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61860145), [12](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62023435), [16](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62370043), [18](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62487388), [19](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62534449)

Jesse waited until the last stragglers had gone up the trail before saying, “Okay, so you were right.”

Dina frowned and slowly sat up on the log. Her t-shirt felt stiff where it creased against her, like it had dried too much. “What do you mean?”

“Them.” Jesse gestured at the trail.

Dina followed his hand and looked at the path, then dragged her eyes down to her knees. She could tell her high had peaked, but she wasn’t back on the ground yet, either.

“Cat and Ellie,” Jesse said. “Maybe you should drink some water.”

“Oh. No fucking shit, I was right,” Dina said, feeling a dull surge of anger as the image flooded back to her. Cat, nuzzling Ellie’s shoulder, clutching at her shirt, pulling her into a kiss. Ellie, turning, responding, smiling.

She swiped the canteen from his hand when he offered it.

Jesse laughed. “So I’m a little oblivious. Sue me. I just figured they were always like that.”

Dina frowned and considered that. “Always like what?”

“Like—that, with each other,” he said, sitting beside her, “like they were at dinner.”

Had they really always been like that?

Dina thought back, thought about Ellie blushing when Cat came up, thought about Ellie staring at her shamelessly at the bonfire, after she played that song.

The memory blurred into the two of them across the campfire, barely an hour ago, mouths and hands full of each other.

How long had it been going on?

\--

Dina grips the reins tighter, absently, looking at the board. She’s paired with Joel today. She’d forgotten.

Outside the stable, she leads Japan across the field to where Joel stands. He dips his head in a faint nod. “Dina,” he says.

Maybe it’s because she’s had Ellie on her mind so much, but all she sees in him is a familiar echo of Ellie. Ellie shifting her weight, fidgeting, her energy awkward and nervous.

Joel never seems nervous, exactly, but he holds himself the same way, like his body is a little bigger or taller than he thinks it is.

“Hey, Joel,” Dina says. She looks aside and mounts her horse, worried suddenly that he can sense what she’s thinking.

“You and me today,” Joel says. He runs his hand over his saddle.

Dina tries not to smile. It’s hard not to like Joel, sometimes, but she tries, for Ellie’s sake. “That’s what I hear,” she says.

Joel climbs up onto his horse and fidgets with the reins, much like Ellie does when she’s thinking about what to say. “You been up this route before?” Joel asks.

“Uh huh,” Dina says, “with you, a few months ago.”

“Oh.” He scratches his beard. “Right.”

To the left, past Greg and Bonnie and their horses, Dina catches a glimpse of Ellie, standing quietly next to Astrid, looking the other way. Ellie’s backpack sags on her shoulders like usual; Dina thinks about the secret hidden inside.

She feels that little flutter, again. Like a bird, sensing rain.

\--

Two days after Talia, Dina had had enough. Her belly cried and clenched, hungry and empty, and her spare water had run dry. She stomped into the bathroom and tore her jacket from the mirror, shoving her arms in the sleeves, glaring at her ghostly outline. She could almost see Talia in herself, the same thick hair and drawn expression.

“This is fucking stupid,” she told herself, told Talia. “You’re not even here. You don’t even care if I do it or not.”

At first, she had wanted to do it right for Talia, the way Talia had wanted to do it right for their mother. But in Albuquerque, she and Talia had sat shiva _together_ , had been visited by the rabbi, by their new community. People had cared about them, albeit out of pity.

No one on Earth knew Dina was here, alone and shuttered in this crumbling motel.

What was the point?

Dina checked the slide of her rifle, slung it over her shoulder, and climbed onto the edge of the tub to push the window open.

\--

“Do you still have dinner with Cat’s family sometimes?” Dina asked.

Jesse looked at her in surprise. “Sometimes,” he said. “Not as much as when we were kids. And I haven’t seen her as much since… you know.”

Dina tapped ash off the joint onto the roof. Without looking back, she asked the chilly air, “How’s she doing?”

“Well… I think she’s been better,” Jesse said. He scooted over to the end of the bed.

Dina glanced at him and passed back.

“Why do you ask?” Jesse took a hit, then settled his elbows on his knees, his eyes on her.

Dina looked back out the window. “Because Ellie still looks like shit.”

Jesse scoffed without humor. “Well. There’s that.”

\--

After an hour on the trail, light snow has begun to fall, catching in Japan’s mane and settling on Dina’s coat and gloves.

“So,” Joel says, picking up speed a bit as they leave the reaches of another empty neighborhood, “how are… things?”

Joel always does this on patrol: tries to ask about Ellie, without asking.

“Fine,” Dina says plainly. After last spring, after Joel orchestrated an intervention at Maria’s and she worried she’d played a role in starting it, Dina keeps her conversations with him as careful and vague as possible.

Plus, he never gives up easily, but also never just says what he means, so he talks in uncertain circles that remind her of Ellie.

“That’s… good,” he says. His head turns toward her a little, then forward again. “You seen that dance comin’ up?”

Dina peers at him, but his back doesn’t offer much insight. “You thinking of going?”

“Oh,” he says, shifting on the saddle and scratching his neck, “I usually go and help Maria with the record player. I was just wondering…”

Joel’s horse slows down. Dina guides Japan around to the side; Joel looks off into the trees, his jaw shifting. She knows he’s wondering if Ellie is going; if she’s going _with_ anyone.

That’s an interesting idea. Dina thinks back to last year, when she dragged Ellie out on the floor, put those nervous hands on her waist, watched those eyes flash as they jumped around the room.

“… you know,” Joel finally says. He shifts the reins to his other hand and avoids her eyes. “You going with that Jesse boy?”

“No.” The thought feels almost alien. Jesse already feels like a lifetime ago.

Joel hardly seems to hear her. “Huh.”

Dina nudges Japan with her heel to pull around and ahead of him, leaving him to his unfinished thoughts and her to her own.

The dance is quite an interesting idea.

\--

Cat opened the front door—or Dina thought it was Cat, until she noticed a few gray hairs, creases around the eyes, and the woman looking at her blankly with no sign of recognition.

“Can I help you?” asked the Cat lookalike. Probably her mom or maybe a sister.

“Um, I’m here to see Cat?” Dina said, twisting her fingers together.

“Oh,” said the woman. A breeze cut across the porch and pushed cold autumn air into Dina’s collar. “Um, come in, then,” the woman said belatedly.

Dina stepped inside and looked around. She’d never been in Cat’s house. It looked like any house in Jackson: tired, but loved. A mug sat beside a book on the coffee table. The sound of clattering dishes and running water came through an open doorway to the kitchen.

“She’s doing the dishes,” the woman said as she walked to the doorway. “Cat, you have a visitor.”

The water noises stopped. The woman went back to the living room without a parting word. Cat appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands dry on a towel. She looked at Dina with surprise, then suspicion.

“What’s up?”

Dina stared at her, at the tattoos covering her arms, at her light, nimble hands in the towel. “Came to see how you are,” Dina said. “Check on you.”

Cat hesitated. Her eyes went to the living room, to the woman on the couch. “That’s it? Or you want to talk?”

“Well.” Dina put her hands in her pockets and looked at the dishes, half on the drying rack, half in the sink. “Maybe let’s talk.”

“Fine.” Cat tossed the towel on the counter and brushed past Dina and up the stairs.

Cat’s room was eerie. Red curtains filtered the sunlight, painting the room deep pink like a wound, or a womb. A mural covered one wall, with smaller sketches and drawings covering the others.

Dina slowed in the center of the floor, and Cat shut the door behind them. When Dina turned, Cat had her arms crossed, her expression guarded. “So?”

“What the fuck happened?” Dina asked. It came out neutral, flat.

Cat leveled her with a stare. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“With Ellie,” Dina said, annoyance bubbling to the surface. “Like, what happened with you guys?”

Cat’s face hardened. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

Dina’s hands jumped out of her pockets, gesturing wide in a helpless shrug. “I mean, it feels like my business when she’s a fucking depressed mess and I can’t figure out how to help her. I just thought—”

Pain flashed across Cat’s face, and she looked to the side. Dina clenched her fists.

“I don’t know. I thought if I knew what happened…”

“She broke my fucking heart, Dina. That’s what happened. Jesus,” Cat hissed. She turned her body away, toward the window, and wiped her eye with her wrist. “If you wanna know more, maybe you should ask her yourself, huh? God knows she’ll talk to _you_.”

Dina opened her mouth, then shut it. Could anything be farther from the truth?

“What do you—”

“Go home, Dina,” Cat said. “Leave me alone.”

\--

After a longer-than-expected detour dealing with a nest below an old café, the flurries have picked up. Snow accumulates wet and heavy on their shoulders as they ride, and Joel leads them off the trail under an overhang in front of the schoolhouse.

Looking up, Dina sees that the darker clouds that have hounded them through the valley are starting to catch up.

“Might need to hole up here in a bit,” Joel mumbles.

Dina shakes a tiny avalanche off her hair and shoulders. “No shit.”

\--

Inside, Joel fusses with the horses, so Dina makes her way across to the office where they keep the supplies and logbook. She fills in their update, leaving space in case they encounter anything overnight.

When she turns, Joel’s standing with one hand on the saddle, peering out the narrow window in the door. “How’s it looking?” she asks.

“Snowy,” he says. Again, Dina can almost see Ellie instead, standing just so, her hand absentminded on her horse, her gaze on the horizon. She wonders if Ellie made it back to Jackson already, or if she and Astrid are snowed in at their lookout, too.

“Might not be home for dinner,” Joel adds. The sarcasm is so faint Dina barely detects it, but when he glances at her, there’s a slight curl to his lip that gives it away.

Dina snorts. “No shit,” she says again, “it’s almost dinnertime already.”

\--

It took almost all day, but finally Dina spotted someone near the old strip mall from her vantage point on its roof. When the man got near enough, Dina splintered his knee with her rifle, then sped down to intercept him before he could crawl away.

At gunpoint, she crowded and cajoled him into the back of the nearest store, out of sight of anyone passing by. She placed her foot on his ruined knee and applied light pressure and he screamed.

The man insisted he didn’t know anything. Didn’t know Talia. Didn’t know the area. Didn’t know who would have done it.

Dina stepped on his knee harder, and harder. Then she hit him in the face with her rifle. Then she shot him in the foot. He cried and sniveled and told her things she already knew, told her about the angry, roving ex-Ravens, told her it was too dangerous for a little girl out here, told her she was as good as dead, told her he wanted her to kill him.

By the end, Dina’s face was a sticky mess of snot and tears, the man was dead on the ground, and she was no closer to Talia’s killers.

She made her way back to the motel room and lit Talia’s candles and said Talia’s prayers and choked down the rations from the dead man’s bag and cried.

\--

Joel sets his empty can on the linoleum with a thoughtful “Huh.”

Dina sets hers aside, too, and sits back on the relative comfort of her bedroll. “What?”

“Don’t know how, but you make them beans taste a lot better than I do,” Joel says with a look of appreciation.

“Oh,” Dina says. “Thanks.”

Joel bends forward onto his hands, then gets his feet beneath him and stands up with a groan. He meets Dina’s eyes with a touch of self-consciousness. “Don’t get old,” he says. “It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Dina smirks at him. Is this what Ellie will be like in twenty years? Still cracking jokes, even as her body starts to slow down, even as time catches up to her?

It’s hard to imagine Ellie, old.

“I’ll try,” she says to Joel, linking her arms around her knees.

Joel picks up the camp stove and bean cans and takes them over to the washtub. “Gonna go wash up. Need anything?”

“Joel,” Dina says, still thinking about Ellie, still thinking about the sketchbook.

He stalls behind her. “Yeah?”

Dina looks at the lantern. “How did you meet Ellie?”

She hears him set the tub back on the counter. There’s a long pause.

“She ain’t ever told you?” he asks awkwardly.

Dina shakes her head. “No. I guess I never asked.”

After another pause, she hears Joel’s heavy steps coming back toward her. He takes a chair from one of the desks and drags it with him, then sits on it a little ways away from her, facing the lantern like it’s a campfire.

“I mean, I know she’s not your… daughter, exactly,” Dina says, careful and hesitant. “Right?”

“No, no,” Joel says. He seems grateful for an easier question to start with. “She’s not… well, we ain’t kin, per se.”

Dina adjusts her hands where they lock together, letting them bear the weight of her legs. She waits for him to continue, watching him puzzle out his answer, wearing the same little frown Ellie does sometimes.

“We, uh, we met in Boston, in the quarantine zone there,” Joel says. He scratches his beard. “I, uh, sort of owed a favor to the folks who was lookin’ after her. They wanted to get her out. So… I got her out.”

Dina peers at him. She tries to pick just one question, since she knows he won’t answer them all. “Why did they want to get her out?” she asks. Then, she smiles a little and jokes, “Too much sass?”

Joel looks uncomfortable. He rubs the back of his neck, his other arm crossed over his stomach. “Well,” he hedges, “things in the QZ were goin’ to hell, an’ they were connected to this group out this way. Wanted me to bring her out to them, I guess.”

He shrugs. Dina turns back to the lantern, trying to imagine Ellie all the way out east, trying to imagine Ellie getting handed off to a stranger. Was she precious cargo or unwanted leftovers? She wonders what the real story is.

Joel chuckles. “She was the littlest thing I ever saw get that pissed off,” he says. When Dina glances at him, he’s looking off into space, into the dark foyer outside the office window. “Mouth like a sailor, too, even then. Life’s… life’s funny, that way.”

Dina snorts. It sounds like the Ellie she met all those years ago, staring at the stars on the playground in Jackson. They were so young, then.

It’s tempting, to ask more, but Dina doesn’t want to push her luck—and deep down, doesn’t she already know what came after? Doesn’t she know better than anyone that after just a little time with Ellie, it’s so easy to love her, so hard to let her go?

Dina chews her lip and wonders for the hundredth, the thousandth time how she didn’t see it sooner.

“You, uh, seein’ much of her, these days?” Joel asks tentatively.

Dina fights a smile. “Only, like, every day.”

Joel looks down at his hands, picks at his nail, and for once, he just asks: “How is she?”

Dina squeezes her arms against her knees. “You know,” she says softly, “I think things are starting to look up, for her.”

“Really?” Joel says, his eyebrows raising.

Dina bites her lips into her mouth and stares resolutely at the lantern. She makes herself a promise.

“Really.”

\--

It was still chilly, even though spring was coming, and Dina was surprised to find Ellie outside in a t-shirt on a ladder, struggling with something on the roof. She had each foot on a different rung, her too-short jeans baring her ankles to the air.

“What’re you doing up there?” Dina called.

Ellie turned, and with her shoulder out of the way, Dina glimpsed a big tree branch. Its scraggly fingers scratched the blue sky above. “Branch fell in the storm last night,” she said. “It’ll just take a second.”

Dina craned her neck and stepped closer to hold the ladder still. Ellie turned back to the roof, braced her belly against the gutter, and strained forward. Dina could see her leg muscles shift under the denim, right at eye level.

“Look out,” Ellie grunted, and Dina ducked her head under the protection of the ladder as the tree branch fell to the ground beside her. Dina looked up again, but Ellie was facing the roof, tracing her hands over the shingles. Her shirt was twisted, ridden up above her waist.

Dina felt a faint pull, just below her gut. She reached out and gripped Ellie’s knee, holding her in place.

Ellie glanced down at her. Her cheeks were pink from exertion and the cool air.

Dina raised her eyebrows. “All good?”

Ellie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” She started down the ladder and Dina released her.

When her feet hit the ground, Ellie pushed her hair from her eyes and looked down to put her shirt back in place. Dina found herself looking up at her, and she realized almost suddenly how much Ellie had grown since she got back, taller and older and surer.

“Something on my face?” Ellie wiped her cheek on her shoulder.

“No.” Dina smiled at her. “All good.”

\--

After so many months, Dina felt no surprise at another dried-up lead.

“I don’t know,” the man burbled, blood bubbling from his lips. “Maybe to the south…” He lifted a hand to point, and then it fell as the life drained from his eyes.

Dina stood over him for a long moment, the pipe heavy in her hand, her breaths even and steady. She felt a coming wave of hopelessness, of futility, and she considered it as if seeing a storm from a great distance.

Deep down, she already knew she would never find Talia’s killers. She could kill every ex-Raven in New Mexico and never know she had found the right one. Talia was no assassination, no targeted kill. She was just another girl out on her own, her aim off by hair, or her reaction a little too slow, or maybe her glasses had caught a glare from the starlight.

There was no rhyme or reason to her death. No plot to uncover or untangle. Just more senseless violence. The same kind Dina had visited upon this dead man, and many dead men before him.

The pipe fell from her grasp, clanking loudly against the tile.

Dina’s feet carried her out the door, down the hall, out onto the street. In the distance, she could see the same group of travelers she’d met earlier, shuffling together up the dusty road.

She ran after them. “Wait!” she hollered. “Wait for me!”

When she caught up, the leader frowned at her. “I thought you wanted to stay. Estaba buscando a alguien.”

“No,” Dina said, shaking her head. “There’s—nothing left for me, here. Where are you headed, again?”

He nodded over his shoulder. “North, señorita. To salvation.”

\--

When Dina wakes, Joel is still fast asleep in his bedroll by the door. Dina puts on her shoes and holster, then walks over to the washtub and rattles the dishes in it.

Joel startles awake, his hand on his pistol in an instant, his eyes darting and refocusing. Dina gives him a moment to orient himself as she packs the dishes and supplies back in their places and updates their logbook entry.

By the time she turns, he’s rolling up the bedding. He catches her eye and clears his throat. “Sleep okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “You?”

“Just fine. How’s it lookin’ out there?”

“Let’s find out.”

\--

The snow is almost waist-high, too deep to hike, but for the horses, it’s manageable. They load up and ride out, the sun shining bright on the fresh snow.

In the clarity of morning, after a day at a distance from Ellie, Dina thinks again about last year’s dance. She thinks about Ellie, holding her hands an inch away from Dina’s waist; about her flighty eyes, her withdrawn, wary expression.

Dina imagines retracing those steps with purpose this time, with knowledge and intent. If she drew Ellie in closer, if she leaned all the way in—what expression would she see, then? Would she get to see that sweet, soft smile up close, just for her?

What would she see in those eyes?

Dina bites her lip.

She’s waited this long.

She can wait three more days.

\--

On the third night, Dina could feel exhaustion overtaking her. Just like the other nights, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and crawled into bed, but this time she could tell she would finally find sleep.

Three days, since Ellie disappeared. Three days of loitering by the gate after shift. Three days of needling Maria for details she wouldn’t give. Three days of wondering, of worrying.

After patrol that day, she’d talked to Maria again and gotten nowhere. She even tracked down Tommy. He’d been just as useless.

Dina twisted the leather straps of her bracelet and thought about Ellie. Her rough, easy laugh. Her stupid jokes. Her bangs falling loose. Her hands on the guitar. Her hurt eyes, the last day Dina saw her, at that bonfire.

It had probably been months since Dina saw her for real, one-on-one. Months of Dina being a coward. Too scared to face _Cat_ , of all people.

Months, wasted.

Because by now, Dina knew, Ellie was definitely dead.

\--

The yard is empty when they return, except for Maria, just visible through the doorway of the stable. Joel gives Dina an awkward nod and leads his horse over to check in.

Dina glances around the yard again and then follows him into the stable. Maria looks up as she approaches, and she touches Joel’s arm, apparently to dismiss him.

Dina slides to the ground as Joel leads his horse down to the stalls. “Anybody else back yet?” Dina asks Maria.

“No,” Maria says, folding her arms across her chest. “Greg and Bonnie are still out there from yesterday, and the rest made it back before the storm and headed out today like usual.”

“Shit.”

The stable hand interrupts to take Japan’s reins. When he leaves, Dina turns back to Maria and says, “We must’ve fucked up the rotation for you, huh?”

Maria shrugs. “Shuffling people is part of the job. Don’t worry about it, Dina,” she adds, reaching out to tap her elbow in reassurance.

“You want me to go back out and cover anything?” Dina asks. “It was an easy ride back. I’m still pretty fresh.”

“Nothing quite that pressing,” Maria says with a smile. “The rest of the day is yours.”

\--

At home, Dina puts her snowy gear by the door and turns the water heater on. With nowhere to be, and nothing to do, she wants to shake the deep cold that settled in overnight in the unheated school.

As she unpacks and puts things away, Dina ponders her plan. Is three days long enough to unlearn that lesson she taught herself so deliberately, after Talia died? Is it enough to get her past the fear?

On the other hand, Dina admits to herself as she sinks into the hot bathwater, fear has always been with her, her whole life. Her father used to tell her fear and thirst were the only things you could count on. Fear was a tool, if you knew how to use it. Fear drew her pistol faster, swung her knife with deadly precision. Fear had never stopped her.

Dina thinks of Ellie again, this time of that heavy, melancholy stare, that gaze always following her across the fire. She thinks of the night Ellie played her song for the first time, when Dina sat right up close in front of her, watching those deep, sad eyes and nervous hands.

She feels that flutter again. She feels that charge of expectation, of promise.

Can she even wait three days?

\--

“So, you gonna tell me who this is for, exactly?” Eugene asked.

Dina waved him off, peering closely at the hard drive and the teeth of the screwdriver in the teeny tiny screw. “What’s it to you?”

“Using some of my rarest parts, is what,” Eugene said gruffly.

“Like you even need these for anything.”

“That’s not the point.”

Eugene left her to work in silence for a bit. When he came back, tearing off a piece of deer jerky with his teeth, he said, “This for that Jesse kid?”

Dina’s lip twitched. “No.”

“Huh.” Eugene clattered something on the bench behind her. “Better not be. Using some of my rarest fuckin’ parts.”

“You said this is the last part to fix, right?” Dina asked. “Everything else was working?”

Eugene came up beside her and leaned heavily on the workbench. “Why, you in some kind of hurry?”

Dina shifted her arm. “Maybe a little. I want to get this done today.”

Eugene leaned back and crossed his arms. “This is the last part.” He stepped away, then came back with the black plastic shell. “Better not be for that Jesse kid.”

“What exactly is your beef with Jesse?” Dina asked, setting the screwdriver aside and carefully lifting the hard drive.

Eugene made a noncommittal grunt. “He’s too fuckin’ happy,” Eugene said. “The fuck he got to be so goddamn fuckin’ happy about?”

Dina snorted. “Me, maybe? Your favorite protégé and his beloved girlfriend?”

“Huh.” Eugene hedged. “Well. I said what I said.”

“Well, relax,” Dina said as she fitted the drive into place and reached for the curved, glossy lid. She traced the word _PlayStation_ embossed on the plastic. “This is for someone else.”

\--

Even though Dina knows it would be easier to stick to her plan if she kept to herself, she finds herself knocking on Ellie’s door after she eats an early dinner.

And just like that, the door opens and Ellie’s right there, wearing an old shirt with the sleeves up, chewing something and hurriedly swallowing it, covering her mouth with her hand. “Hey, Dina,” she says.

Dina looks at her and feels that pull, stronger than yesterday, almost like Ellie reached out and grabbed her by the coat. “Hey, Ellie,” she says.

She waits too long, just standing outside the door looking at Ellie’s tired face, her messy hair, her eyes deep and soft and full, full of love.

“You wanna come in?” Ellie asks awkwardly.

“Uh, yeah,” Dina says in a rush, pushing past Ellie and hoping the cold explains her blush.

“Guess you got snowed in out there yesterday?” Ellie says as she shuts the door.

Dina toes her boots off and rubs her hands together. “Yeah. Wasn’t a big deal. You got back before the storm?”

“We decided not to sweep the buildings.” Ellie shrugs. “We’ll be back out there next week, anyway.”

Dina smiles a little and looks around. “What’d you do last night without me around to entertain you?”

Ellie’s eyes slide to the desk behind Dina. “You know. The usual.”

Dina feels her face heat up, thinking about Ellie hunched over her desk, pen pressed to the page. “Video games and mope?” she asks.

Ellie smiles a little. “Something like that. Let me just…” She sidesteps around Dina to the desk, where she flips her notebook closed and starts gathering her dish and cup.

“You can finish eating, doofus,” Dina says, almost out of muscle memory. She takes off her coat and hangs it by the door.

Ellie leans against the desk and shovels the last few bites in all at once.

Dina shakes her head, fighting a smile. “I swear, you are such a graceful eater,” she says.

Ellie puts her fork down and flips the bird as she walks the dishes to the sink.

Dina watches her run the dish and cup under the water, her movements easy and loose, her shoulder blades poking the back of her shirt.

“What do you wanna do tonight?” Ellie asks.

“Hmm,” Dina hums. She looks between the couch and the bed, her pulse suddenly picking up. “I dunno. What do you think?”

“We could play that racing game,” Ellie says. She turns to Dina, arms crossed, leaning back against the sink.

Dina looks at her, and again she looks too long, falls too deep. Without meaning to, she imagines walking right up into Ellie’s arms, touching her face, giving in to the pull.

Ellie drops her gaze to the floor and scratches her ear. The tattoo ripples as her fingers move. “Or, like, watch a movie?”

“Um,” Dina blinks hard, “racing game is fine.” She flashes Ellie a reassuring smile and goes over to the PlayStation, flipping through the plastic cases. “What do I get if I win?”

Behind her, Ellie snorts. “You won’t win,” she says, full of false bravado.

Dina turns and Ellie’s closer than she realized, standing just beside her. Dina bites her lip. “Then what do you want, if you win?” she asks, unable to help herself.

Ellie looks at her, and Dina can see her startle, just a little, her eyes opening wide. She recovers fast, though, and drops her gaze. “I get to pick the movie, next time,” she says, so easily, so casually.

Ellie picks up a controller, then retreats to the bed. Dina takes a moment to center herself before following suit.

This time, as Dina settles next to Ellie, she sees Ellie stiffen and brace herself. Dina leaves her more space than usual, with just their knees touching. “See anything fun out with Astrid today?” Dina asks as Ellie navigates to the game.

“Saw some baby rabbits at the edge of the woods,” Ellie offers.

“And Astrid didn’t shoot them?” Dina asks, smiling.

Ellie snorts. “Probably figured they weren’t worth it, that small. They’ll be bigger in a few months.”

With Dina’s input, Ellie picks a course and they each select a ship to pilot. Ellie says, “How about you? How was your sleepover with… whoever you were with?”

“It was fine. I was with Joel, actually,” Dina says. Right on cue, Ellie stiffens up again.

“Oh,” Ellie says. She bites her lip.

Dina knows Ellie wouldn’t have asked, if she knew it was Joel.

“How was that?” Ellie asks, maybe curious despite herself, maybe feeling obligated to continue the conversation.

Dina weighs her options. “Better than getting snowed in with Chad,” she says.

Ellie laughs. “Has that happened to you?”

“A couple years ago, like right when he started on pairs,” Dina says, smirking. “It was fucking awful.”

“Why did I never hear about this?” Ellie asks, and Dina steers off the course by accident.

“Fuck.” Dina waits for her ship to respawn. “It was a while ago, now. I think it was while you were—gone.”

“Oh.” Ellie barely misses a crash of her own.

“He’s such a skeez,” Dina offers, as an out. “He made like a hundred innuendos that whole night.”

Ellie snorts. “Gross.”

Dina chances a look and finds Ellie watching the screen, her fear fading, her eyes still wary. Ellie senses her and glances her way, just for a second, then back to the screen. “You’re gonna crash.”

Dina bites her lip and turns to the screen. Her ship collides with the wall, exploding into flame.


	4. to bloom beneath the blazing sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jackson Days companion chapters: [10](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61953595), [12](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62023435), [13](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62071054), [19](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62534449), and during the same year and season as [22](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62789833)
> 
> Multiple scenes from some of these chapters. There’s nothing here from chapter 24, but there is a strong purposeful parallel scene.

Dina wakes and Ellie is there, above her. Her eyes are dark, swallowed up by her pupils, her irises a thin, pale ring. Her body overlaps Dina’s hips and legs. _Ellie?_

Ellie just looks at her, her eyes as deep and hollow as a dry well. Fingers trace lightly across Dina’s cheek.

 _What are you doing here?_ Dina tries to ask, although she hears no sound break the stillness of the room.

Those eyes drop to Dina’s lips, and Ellie drags her thumb across them slowly. _I came to see you_ , Ellie says, or seems to say.

 _You’ve been drawing me_ , Dina says.

_Do you want me to stop?_

Dina clutches Ellie’s shirt with both hands. She feels her body wake and respond. _No_ , Dina breathes out, _I want you to start_.

Then Ellie is kissing her, and Dina’s heart is hammering like heavy rain, and Ellie’s hands leave smooth trails of fire down Dina’s body, and maybe it _is_ raining because Dina hears thunder, and lightning flashes in the window as Ellie slips into Dina’s shorts and starts to touch her.

Dina gasps and into Ellie’s ear, she asks, _Ellie, do you love me?_

Ellie draws back and looks at her with those eyes, dark and otherworldly. _Set me as a seal upon thy heart, for love is strong as death._

 _Ellie_ , Dina pants, and Ellie moves down the bed, trailing fire down her bare belly, along her bare thighs.

As Ellie bends to her, she finds Dina’s eyes once more and she says, _The land you seek is a land of hills and valleys, and it drinketh the rains of heaven._

Thunder cracks outside and she feels Ellie’s mouth press against her.

\--

“Ellie,” Dina gasps, jerking upright.

The apartment is dark, and she’s alone. There’s no storm. The air is quiet, and cold.

Dina draws deep breaths, two in, one out. She feels warm. Her shorts are damp.

Does Ellie dream of her, like this? Does she wake with Dina’s name on her lips in the middle of the night?

The thought makes her face flush. Dina drops back onto the bed and hooks her thumb in her waistband, debating.

After a moment, she slips her hand inside. It’s not like anyone will ever know.

\--

As usual, when Dina let herself in, Ellie was nestled in blankets and pillows on the bed, eyes glued to the TV screen.

“Hey, Ellie.” Dina walked straight to the kitchen to set down the containers she carried.

“Hey, babysitter,” Ellie said back. Dina heard combat noises from the TV and the frantic clicking of buttons on the controller. “Whatcha doing?”

Dina put her backpack on the floor and pulled out plates from the cupboard. “Picked up dinner from the diner,” Dina said over her shoulder. “Figured we could use a change of pace.”

“Oh, sweet.” Dina heard the game pause.

“Don’t get up,” she warned.

“Wasn’t.” Guilt colored Ellie’s voice.

Dina turned and sure enough, Ellie was shuffling back around, putting her injured foot back where it was on the pillow. She rolled her eyes and brought the plates over. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Thanks.” Ellie stuck her tongue out, then relented immediately when Dina set fresh hot food in her lap. “Um, thanks, for real.”

Dina brought her plate around to the other side of the bed and sat. “Don’t thank me too much. I just didn’t feel like cooking.”

Ellie chewed slower, her cheeks turning pink. “You don’t have to do that, you know,” she said around a mouthful. “Come over and cook and clean up and stuff. I mean, it’s nice that you’re doing it… but you don’t, like, have to.”

Dina rolled her eyes and smiled. “I know I don’t _have to_. I want to. You’re my friend.”

“Right.” Ellie scratched her ear, hiding her face. Her tattoo stood out harsh and dark against her pale arm.

Dina waited, but Ellie just took another big bite. So, Dina turned toward the screen. “What’re you playing?”

\--

In the morning, Dina springs out of bed, humming with energy. She gets ready and dressed and out the door ahead of schedule, so she takes a detour.

Even the path to Ellie’s place charges her pulse in her throat. By the time she reaches the garage, she feels alive and excited and eager. She knocks and hears Ellie yell, “One minute!”

“It’s just me,” Dina calls through the door. She rocks on her heels.

There’s a pause, then she hears, “Come in!”

Dina opens the door and spots Ellie by the bed, freeing her loose, wet hair from the collar of her shirt. “You’re early,” Ellie says.

“Am I? Or are you late?” Dina teases.

Ellie rolls her eyes and walks back across to her desk, pulling her hair up as she goes into a hasty bun. Her shirt clings at her shoulders and chest where her skin is still damp. “I have a clock, asshole,” she says.

Dina drags her eyes away from Ellie. “If we get there early, there’ll still be food left.”

“I’m going, just gimme a second.” Ellie opens her backpack and tosses her gear in.

“You’re gonna be cold,” Dina says.

Ellie frowns and smirks at her. “I’m getting to that,” she says, carrying the bag back to the bed. She tosses it on top of a wrinkled towel and grabs a thick flannel shirt off a hanger.

“Better safe than sorry,” Dina says, out of habit.

Ellie looks up from her buttons and raises an eyebrow. She hesitates for a second, then says, “Don’t make me quote your song at you.”

Dina bites her lips into her mouth. She wants to kiss her, so badly. Instead, she says, “Come on, slowpoke. I want a muffin.”

\--

Lately, Jesse liked tagging along with Dina to the market for her provision share. As she stood at the table, watching the veggies packed in neat rows into the small crate, Jesse hovered behind her, his hand running lightly against her lower back.

She was about to shrug him off when she heard “Hey, guys,” in Cat’s gentle, sweet, annoying fucking voice.

Dina turned and pushed back to place Jesse’s hand more firmly against her. “Cat,” she said, just as Jesse said the same in a friendlier way.

“You’re up again already?” Jesse asked, nodding at the distribution line.

“No, just passing through,” Cat said, smiling at him. Dina wondered if Cat smiled the same way at Ellie, or if she had a different smile for her, like Ellie seemed to. “Just headed to my girlfriend’s.”

Dina felt her teeth squeak together from grinding too hard.

Maybe it was good, that Jesse was there to give her the correct response—a grin and a teasing, “Oh, your _girlfriend_ , huh?”

Cat smiled wider, her eyes scrunching up. She made a general, mysterious shrug. Dina eyed the tattoos on her arms, ugly splotches of ink, each one an island in a pale sea.

“Lucky her,” Dina muttered sarcastically.

Cat looked at her and snorted. She opened her mouth to speak, but Jesse stepped between them to lift Dina’s full crate off the table.

“Guess you better get going,” Cat said. As her eyes caught Dina’s, her smile turned coy, smug.

Dina sneered at her, just for a second before she got her face under control.

Cat swept past them and Jesse steered Dina out of the way of the line. He started a slow stroll toward Dina’s place and let out a low whistle. “Sounds almost serious,” he said.

Dina glared at the road and said nothing.

\--

“Wonder who I’m with today,” Dina says as they walk.

Ellie peers at her. “You still on the merry-go-round?”

“Yeah, until someone comes up from group patrol, supposedly.” Dina shrugs.

“Right. You didn’t check the schedule?”

“Just don’t remember. I swear it’s someone new every day.” Dina kicks a tuft of snow. The conversation is making her miss Eugene.

Ellie sticks her hands in her jean pockets. “You’ll probably get Astrid tomorrow,” she says. “I’m off, but she’s not.”

Dina glances at her and bites her lip. “Another day, all alone?” she says, more tenderly than she means to. “What are you gonna do with yourself?”

She wants to ask if Ellie will sit at home and think about her.

Ellie just shrugs. “You know. Whatever.”

\--

It’s almost like Jesse overheard Dina razzing on Chad yesterday, because Chad is the name next to hers on the board today. Dina barely swallows a sigh of exasperation.

Ellie snorts. “Maybe you’ll get snowed in today, too,” she says, knocking elbows.

Dina smirks and shoves her. “Shut up.”

\--

Ellie pulls off next to Astrid, giving her a familiar nod, and Dina reluctantly walks on past them. Near the center of the pack, Chad leans with exaggerated ease on the saddle of his horse.

“Hey,” she says as she hops up onto Japan.

Chad looks at her brightly. “Hey, Dina,” he says.

Dina rolls her eyes. He sounds way too interested. He must have heard about Jesse.

“So, uh, no more Jesse, I hear?” Chad drawls.

Dina takes a slow, thoughtful bite of her muffin, then asks as dismissively as she can, “Where exactly did you hear that?”

Chad mounts his horse and shrugs. “Word gets around.”

“So, the Jackson grapevine.”

“Yeah, basically.” Chad leans toward her and bats his eyelashes. “You wanna talk about it?”

Dina finds herself looking to the left, catching Ellie sliding a boot into the stirrup, swinging her leg over the saddle.

“Not really.”

\--

All Dina could think about was Ellie. Ellie fallen onto hard concrete, black blood pooling under her head. Ellie crumpled at the bottom of a ditch. Ellie prone behind a dumpster. Her hands still. Her eyes blank.

Ten days.

“Dina, are you listening?”

Dina bit her cheek hard to keep from snapping _no_. “Um. What?”

Jesse sighed. She could tell his patience was wearing thin. “Never mind. Can you just, like, pretend, at least?”

Dina glared at him, sullen. “Can you fucking quit pretending, maybe? Our friend is fucking missing.”

“Dina.” He looked at her strangely. “She’s not missing. They just went camping. And it’s only been like a week. What are you…?”

Dina looked away. “It’s been ten days, Jesse. Something is wrong.”

Jesse sighed. “Why do you always think something is wrong?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Jesse.”

Jesse frowned, hurt. Dina tried to reel in the fear, but it leeched out of her everywhere. The fear, the dread, felt familiar and awful. It felt like a sandy parking lot, approaching a dumpster, like a desolate camp beside a broken highway, like a distant gunshot.

How many times had she helplessly followed the track of destiny, biding her time until the next horrible, irreparable loss?

Dina looked down at her hands. She touched the silver hamsa. “Sorry. It’s just… Worrying’s in my blood.”

\--

It was easy to find her. Dina debated for a moment, second-guessing her impulse to come here, but by then Cat was walking toward the shed and caught sight of her anyway.

Cat approached her with wary surprise. “Hey, Dina. What… do you want?” She frowned.

“Um,” Dina started, twisting her fingers together, “sorry to bug you, I was just wondering if… maybe you knew where Ellie went. On their camping trip.”

Cat’s face clouded. She looked almost angry. “Oh,” she said coldly. “I don’t.”

Dina chewed her lip. She hadn’t anticipated that. “What did she tell you?”

Cat leaned against the shed and crossed her arms. Her eyes scraped Dina head to toe. “Since when do you care?”

“She’s my friend,” Dina said, flinching.

“Friend,” Cat said. “Right.” She looked at Dina with bare malice.

Dina hesitated. She’d never seen Cat angry. It was unsettling. “I know I haven’t been the best friend lately—”

“Listen, Dina, I don’t get you,” Cat said, shaking her head. “But I mean, you and I aren’t friends anymore, okay? I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

Only then did Dina notice the dark circles under Cat’s eyes: the worry, and fear.

Cat turned away and went back inside.

\--

Chad is talkative, and a little sloppy, but the shift is uneventful, so the talk is the bigger issue.

“Okay,” Dina finally interrupts at the end of their lunch break, “I mean this in, like, the nicest way possible, but can you please give it a rest?”

Chad stops midstream and looks at her, stricken. “Fuck, my bad. You having a rough time with it?”

Dina sighs. “With what?”

“You know,” Chad says, waving his hand vaguely, “the breakup, or whatever. I heard Jesse was all torn up about it. Said it was for real this time.”

Dina sighs again. “Who did you even hear this shit from, Chad?”

“Guess he went to the diner to spill his guts about it last night.”

“Of course,” she mutters, more to herself than him. She packs the remains of her lunch back into her bag and stands up.

Chad looks up at her and, with a mouthful of sandwich, he asks, “You ready to move on?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Dina says, turning her head back toward Jackson. She can almost make out the walls from here.

\--

The weight of the body almost pulled Dina down with it as the knife came free. She whirled, panting, her heart pounding, and spotted Talia, still as a stone, staring at the dirty carpet on all fours.

“Tal!” she called. She gripped the knife so hard her hand shook. There was no one left, though. Just three dead men.

She crossed the room and squatted, touching Talia’s shoulder, her face. She could feel Talia’s body heaving, but Talia didn’t respond. “Talia?”

Dina ducked her head and Talia’s eyes were wide and blank, moving wildly, seeing nothing. Something was wrong. Panic rose in her throat like bile.

“Talia,” she said again, shaking Talia’s shoulder. “Talia! What’s wrong?”

“Dina,” Talia gasped. Her fingers twitched and dug into the carpet. She sat back on her heels, hiccupping, breathless.

“Are you okay?” Dina asked helplessly. Her voice came out thin and high and scared. She felt Talia’s head for blood, for a wound, but there was nothing. “What’s happening?”

Talia touched Dina’s arm, her shoulder, her arm again, eyes unfocused.

“I’m—I’m okay,” Talia managed, but she didn’t seem okay, not even a little. “I—I was just…”

Dina clutched at her shirt desperately, hoping to bring Talia back from wherever she was. She seemed far away, like smoke bleeding into the sky, like ash blowing away on the wind. Dina tugged, half expecting the shirt to come free in her hands with no one inside it, expecting Talia to disappear like a mirage or memory.

“Tal,” Dina begged.

She didn’t know what she would do without Talia.

Talia said something in Hebrew, quietly, and Dina didn’t understand it, and she felt a tear on her cheek, wet and hot. “Are you okay?” Dina asked again, begging, hoping to be convinced.

“I’m okay,” Talia said, swallowing so hard Dina could see her throat flex. She gripped Dina’s shoulders, hard, and her eyes settled on Dina, and Dina felt her taking her measured triplet breaths. Talia’s eyes were steady now, brown and warm.

With a final, shaky sigh, Talia got to her feet and walked to the couch to pick up the go bag. Dina heard it even before Talia actually said it, the words that came every few weeks without fail ever since they left Albuquerque: “We need to move on.”

\--

Dina steeled herself as she closed the yard gate, still rattled from her conversation with Jesse. He was right, she reminded herself; she knew he was right. She was being a bad friend. Ellie hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

There wasn’t anything wrong with it, with Ellie and—Cat. No reason to avoid them. It wasn’t like Dina hadn’t made out with Jesse at the lake that same day. It wasn’t like she was a prude or anything.

So, she would put things back the way they were.

How hard could that be?

Dina came around the corner to the door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

Inside, she heard Ellie swear and say, “One second!”

She heard a giggle. Two voices. Rustling.

Cat.

Fear flashed through Dina’s mind. Instantly she saw the two of them naked, twined together. Ellie pushing to her feet, pulling clothes on, reluctant. Cat smiling at her. Cat asking her to stay, to leave the door shut and locked. Ellie, shirt backward, hair mussed, reaching for the doorknob.

Dina ran.

\--

They encounter a few runners outside a gas station, and Dina convinces Chad to do a sweep of the surrounding streets, just in case. He complains the whole time.

“Why do you even do patrol, if you hate it so much?” she finally asks, tired of rolling her eyes at him.

“I don’t hate it,” he says, indignant.

Dina lowers her rifle and glares at him. “You do know checking houses and taking out infected is, like, the entire point of patrol, right?”

Chad shrugs. “I mean, okay, that part isn’t my favorite, but whatever.”

“So why do it?” Dina asks in annoyance. It’s a gentler version of what she wants to ask, which is why he forces the rest of them to put up with his indifference and sloppiness.

Chad fumbles his rifle, then picks it up out of the snow. He flashes a shit-eating grin. “Chicks dig it.”

\--

No answer.

Dina took a shaky breath and knocked again. “Ellie,” she said, her voice weaker than she wanted.

From inside, she heard “Fuck off,” thin and ragged.

Dina tried the doorknob and it turned. She stepped inside and found Ellie sitting up in bed, her clothes and hair rumpled, her face an ugly grimace. Dina bit the inside of her cheek and quietly shut the door. The room went dark.

Even now, she didn’t know what to say. She’d only come because she knew somehow if she waited any longer, it would be too late to repair anything.

“Twice in one day,” Ellie rasped, a shadow against the dim gray window. “Throw me my journal. I gotta write this down.”

It cut deep, probably intentionally. Just like earlier, on the trail back to Jackson.

“Ellie,” Dina said, her throat clogged.

“What.”

“I’m really sorry, Ellie,” Dina said. The words sounded helpless, pleading. Dina couldn’t even feel embarrassed for it.

Ellie’s head was bent. She said nothing. Her arm shifted, barely visible as Dina’s eyes adjusted.

Dina swallowed hard. “I fucked up, okay?”

Ellie shifted; touched her face. Dina felt her heart thundering in her chest. “It’s fine, Dina,” Ellie said, a lie so obvious that it hurt, too, like she thought Dina wouldn’t see through it.

Like they were acquaintances, strangers, for whom lies were enough.

“No, I really did fuck up,” Dina pushed. “I shouldn’t have…”

Dina wasn’t sure what to say. How could she explain why she’d kept her distance? How could she admit that seeing her best friend find happiness had hurt so much, so inexplicably?

“You were right,” she tried again. “I was avoiding you—but not for the reason you think.”

Dina wet her lips, but before she could continue, Ellie said, “I know. I know you’re not like that.”

Dina hesitated. She wished she could see Ellie’s face. Ellie felt so far away.

“Good,” she said uncertainly. “It was never… I don’t care if you’re—gay, Ellie.”

Saying the word out loud felt like dropping a stone in the lake, the way the whole surface rippled, the tremors reaching all the way to the far shore.

“It kind of felt like you did,” Ellie said. She sounded small. Scared.

Dina let out a shaky breath and turned the lamp on. She needed to see.

On the bed, Ellie winced. In the light, she looked terrible. Her face was puffy and pale, streaked with dry tears. Her sweatshirt was twisted and bunched up.

Dina approached carefully. “In hindsight, I get it… I was kind of a jerk about it.”

Ellie watched her and pulled her sleeves down, hiding the black lines on her forearm. As Dina sat on the bed, Ellie said, “Cat said you were just jealous,” and stopped Dina’s heart cold.

Jealous?

Dina faltered, puzzled. She tried to fit the pieces together. The rage and hurt at seeing them together. The urge to avoid them. The way she got fixated on them, when she did see them.

She’d never felt jealousy before—never even encountered it, except as a weapon, a tool to bring Jesse back around when he was being an asshole.

But that would mean—

“Like, you didn’t like me spending all my time with her,” Ellie clarified.

And that made sense, it was true, and it was simpler. Dina sat heavily on the bed and looked away. “Yeah. Yeah, um, it was stupid.”

Ellie was quiet, long enough for Dina to bury that staggering thought deep beneath the earth.

“It’s not like you had any time for me when you and Jesse got together. I’ve been making time for you,” Ellie said. “You just didn’t want any of it.”

Dina could feel Ellie’s eyes on her, piercing and sharp. Dina wasn’t sure she wanted any of Ellie’s time even now, when Ellie was bound to land right back in Cat’s arms. But images of them together were still better than images of Ellie dead. It was still better than the waiting and wondering and worrying of the past two weeks.

“Dina.”

Dina looked up, like a rabbit stepping neatly into a snare. Ellie looked at her deeply, earnestly, hurt and sad and lonely, and in those pale eyes Dina felt like she could see all the way in, all the way down to that soft, bruised heart. It was too much, too far, too deep and wide and great, like the crushing black abyss of the ocean.

“Just say it,” Ellie said quietly, straining, pleading.

Dina dropped her gaze to her lap. “I’m sorry,” she said, with as much gravity as she could lend it.

And she was. She saw now how much she had wasted; how much she had squandered.

This friendship was too important to throw away.

Dina would make it right.

\--

“So, I gotta ask,” Chad says, pulling up beside her on the trail. “ _Is_ it for real this time? The breakup.”

Dina spares him a glance. He’s not her first choice of confidante, but the more people she tells, the more likely Jesse will take it seriously. “Yeah,” she says, putting her eyes back on the path, on Jackson in the distance. “It’s real.”

“I just ask because”—Chad gestures at her—“you guys do kind of do this all the time.”

Dina bristles. “It’s real this time,” she says firmly. But the comment nags at her; is this why Ellie didn’t react, when Dina told her? She thought it was another break?

Chad shrugs. “If you say so.”

Dina feels his eyes lingering.

Right on cue, he leans toward her a little and asks, “So, you ready for a new man, then?”

“If memory serves, you’re still hot for Candice,” Dina says.

“Doesn’t take much to get me hot,” Chad shoots back, wagging his eyebrows at her.

Dina makes an exaggerated retching noise. “Fuck off, Chad.”

“So that’s a no?”

Dina rolls her eyes. “A loud, emphatic no.”

Chad snaps his fingers. “Oh, well. Worth a shot.”

\--

It was dark, and quiet. Dina woke and reached immediately for the pistol under her pillow.

“It’s me,” Talia whispered. Dina heard the quiet click of Talia’s revolver.

Dina sat up. From the pitch darkness, she recognized the early hours of morning, maybe two or three o’clock. Talia was dressed already, and wearing her backpack. She put the revolver in her holster and slung her rifle over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Dina whispered. “Come back.”

Talia jerked her head at the barricaded door. “Heard a noise. Just going to check it out. Make sure nobody’s skulking around out there.”

Dina wiped her sleepy eyes. “We can deal with it in the morning. Just… stay.”

Talia looked at her, and Dina recognized the pity on her face. It made Dina scowl.

“I’m not scared,” Dina added, unnecessarily.

Talia sat on the bed, her rifle catching on the coverlet, and she reached out to tuck stray hair behind Dina’s ear. “I’ll be back before you know it,” she said softly. She pulled Dina in to her and kissed her forehead. “Just wait for me here. I won’t be long.”

Dina swallowed and reached for Talia’s hand.

But Talia was already up, already leaving, walking toward the bathroom.

“Oh,” Talia said, smiling at her, “and happy birthday.”

\--

When they get back, Dina peeks at the sheet in the stable and sees Ellie and Astrid already checked back in.

Dina makes a stop at home to change clothes and drop off her bag. Like every one of the past few days, she really just wants to run right over to Ellie’s to see her—but she also just wants to run right up into Ellie’s arms, and she promised herself she would wait a little longer.

Instead, Dina paces aimlessly, doing a few pull-ups on the bar, making the bed, tidying the nightstand. When she runs out of outlets for her nervous energy, she walks over to the diner and eats by herself, making polite small talk with Seth at the bar.

Again, Dina thinks about Ellie at a bonfire, quiet and morose, nursing a drink and going stiff when Dina comes over to her. Dina wonders now if it was fear she saw in Ellie, all those nights, those hundreds and thousands of moments.

Does Ellie sense the rainclouds, too?

\--

Dina stood at the doorway of the stable scowling at the rain. It wasn’t that heavy, but it had been raining most of the afternoon, and the path through the yard was a muddy, soupy muck.

“You need an umbrella?”

Dina turned as Ellie came up beside her. Like Dina, Ellie was soaked from the ride back, her hair soaked and dripping on the dirt floor, her face wet as if she’d been crying.

“You have an umbrella?” Dina asked, unable to hide her shock.

Ellie smirked. “No. Just asking.”

Dina snorted and chocked her elbow. “You’re such a dick.”

“You could always just bed down here,” Ellie said, tipping her head back toward the stable. “Bet Japan could make room for you.”

“I wish,” Dina said, smirking back, “but I doubt it. He’s a dick, too.”

Ellie laughed. “That’s true. Shimmer would probably let you bunk with her, though.”

“Ugh. I think I would die of carbon monoxide poisoning from those noxious farts.”

“Hey, be nice. Japan doesn’t smell too hot, either.”

Dina frowned with mock sincerity. “Japan is absolutely hot. Shimmer would back me up.”

“Hot like hot garbage,” Ellie said back, laughing at her own joke.

Dina turned back to the yard and groaned. “I hate spring.”

Ellie peered up at the dark clouds. “I kind of like the rain. Smells good.”

Dina looked at her. Her eyes were light in the glare of the overcast sky. Dina took a deep, thoughtful breath of the clean air.

It did smell good.

\--

Dina slows her steps as she nears Ellie’s door. There’s music coming from inside.

Tonight, it stops her. She stalls at the door, hands still in her pockets, and bends her ear toward the curtained window.

“ _… over Jordan; I’m only going over home…_ ”

Dina swallows, hard. She can picture Ellie perfectly, curled up on the bed, coaxing beautiful sounds from the strings, from her own bone-deep loneliness. Dina can see it play out: herself opening the door, Ellie looking up at her with those cool, heavy eyes—and the pull, dragging Dina right to her, putting Ellie’s face in her hands, bringing their lips together.

She shuts her eyes and wavers, still bent to the door, still listening to Ellie’s mournful voice and careful hands.

Tonight, she knows suddenly, certainly, if she goes inside, she won’t be able to wait. She won’t be able to hold back.

So Dina goes home.


	5. all of the colors that live inside of me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jackson Days companion chapters: [5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61672171), [10](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61953595), [11](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/62009893)
> 
> a few scattered homages to the work of [Whiskeytango86](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiskeytango86/pseuds/Whiskeytango86) and [Breezered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/breezered/pseuds/breezered), if you can spot them

The powder fell slowly into the pot, like a cloud or a sandstorm, the flecks feather-light on the air. The spices smelled wonderful, earthy and homey, and Dina watched with devout fervor as Tikvah’s gnarled hands flicked a pinch of this and a pinch of that into the pot with practiced ease.

“Wait, wait,” Dina said, smudging the ink as she wrote, trying to keep up. “What was that last one?”

“Cumin,” Tikvah said patiently. She brushed her hands off over the chili and stirred the spoon. “Don’t tell Leah, though. It’s hard to come by.”

Dina frowned up at her. “What do you use if there isn’t any, then?”

Tikvah opened her mouth to answer when they heard gunfire outside.

Dina snapped her notebook shut and scrambled to the front of the kitchen to get her backpack.

“Go find your sister,” Tikvah was saying, when Dina looked back at her. Tikvah wiped her hands on her apron and pulled a shotgun from the lower cabinet. “I’ll be fine.”

\--

The alarm goes off in the middle of another dream. When Dina sits up, silencing it, the dream fades almost instantly, but it leaves her with the sensation of something left unfinished. It feels like a lingering, needling expectation, like a song cut short before the last note, a melody left unresolved.

Dina wishes suddenly—fiercely—that she hadn’t gone home last night. That she’d opened Ellie’s door and faced her.

As she wishes it, Dina realizes it’s not too late. She could run over to Ellie’s now; wake her up with a knock; watch the door open to reveal messy bedhead, tired eyes. She wonders what Ellie wears to sleep in, now. It’s been a long time since she stayed over.

But—no. Ellie deserves to sleep in on her day off, and besides, Dina knows if she went there now, she’d never make it to the gates for her shift.

And, though Dina doesn’t consider herself all that important in the grand scheme of things, in the great tapestry of the universe, being part of patrol means that people count on her. Her work matters.

So, instead, Dina gets ready and heads to the stable, reminding herself that her waiting is almost over. Tonight, she’ll ask Ellie to the dance.

\--

As she rounded the corner toward Jesse’s house, Dina stopped short at the sound of voices speaking a language she didn’t know. Two women spoke together on the far side of the porch, one of them Jesse’s mother. Closer to Dina, Jesse smiled on the top stair down at someone else.

“Say hi to Dina for me,” said the person below him, and Dina recognized Cat, running a hand through her stupid silky hair and smiling at Jesse.

“Yeah, I will,” Jesse was saying, as Cat started down the steps and then caught sight of her.

Cat smiled coolly at Dina and gave a dumb little wave. “Guess I’ll say it myself,” she said. “Hi, Dina.”

Dina tongued her teeth and tried not to glare. “Hi, Cat.”

Cat looked at her like she could see her thoughts, like she could see Dina flashing back to the lake, to the bonfire, to Cat and Ellie mashing faces, to them linking hands and arms in the street, to them hopping up on Ellie’s desk or lying flat on Ellie’s bed and—

“See you later, Jesse,” Cat said, waving at him. She spared Dina an almost pitying glance before turning on her heel and walking up the street. The stranger on the porch bid Jesse’s mother goodbye and headed after Cat without even noticing Dina.

Dina stared hard at the back of Cat’s head, at her weak, slim shoulders, the black splotches on her bare arms.

“Sorry, dinner ran long,” Jesse said, suddenly in front of her, gently taking her hands in his. “Mom got real psyched about getting her kimchi recipe.”

Dina forced her eyes to him; forced the images from her mind. “No problem,” she said.

Fucking Cat.

Well—poor choice of words.

\--

Even though Dina knows Ellie has the day off, her eyes still scan the group of patrollers out of habit, looking for her.

Instead, she accidentally catches Jesse’s eye. He waves at her with a bashful smile and rubs the back of his neck. Dina flinches and turns away, back to Astrid beside her.

“Hey, Astrid,” Dina says.

Astrid nods at her.

After Maria sends them out, as they peel off onto their assigned trail, Dina asks, “Think we’ll see much action out this way?”

Astrid just shrugs. “Could be.”

\--

Just as Dina hesitated, torn between checking the house and checking the synagogue, she spotted Talia running up the street toward her. Talia waved her toward the house insistently, her revolver cocked and ready, her eyes scanning the street.

Ghost yowled on the doorstep, begging for food, his white fur raised in a ridge down his arched back. Dina went around him and opened the door so hard it banged against the wall. She winced, but Talia just closed it behind them and flipped the lock.

“What’s going on?”

“We need to pack,” Talia said. She put her revolver in her waistband and swung her backpack around to the front so she could open the zipper.

Dina bit her lip and went to the kitchen to pull out the dried supplies. She put her backpack next to it on the counter. “Did you see anything where you were?”

“Didn’t need to,” Talia said, moving around in the living room. “It’s gotta be the Ravens.”

Dina pushed the food to the side of the bag to make space for another liter of water and two canteens. “You think we need to leave?”

It had been a long time, since they were out on the road. A long time since they were alone. A long time since their mother died.

“It was only a matter of time,” Talia said. “I knew it would be soon, but…”

Outside, more gunshots popped off.

Really, deep down, Dina had felt the same way for some time. Tension with the Ravens had been ramping up for months. Some families had already left after the confrontation a few weeks prior. And, at this point, Dina had learned that good things only lasted so long.

Dina hefted her heavy bag onto her back and pulled the spare ammunition from under the sink. She checked her waistband for her pistol. In the living room, she found Talia carefully nestling the menorah in her backpack, padded with her notebook and Hebrew calendar and a box of bullets.

“Tal,” Dina said, concerned and frightened and annoyed. “You’re bringing that?”

Talia looked at her, hard, determined. “Some things, you don’t leave behind.”

\--

Dina watches as another runner fell on the distant hillside. Astrid reloads the rifle, sweeping it and the scope slowly over the white expanse, checking for more targets.

“Do you like patrolling with Ellie?” Dina asks. She thinks about all the time Astrid spent with Ellie over the past couple years, out here in the silence. She wonders if Astrid ever caught Ellie with her notebook and saw Dina’s face taking shape on the page.

Astrid pulls the trigger and drops another stick figure in the distance. She scans for another long moment, just long enough that Dina starts to think Astrid didn’t hear her.

Astrid lowers the rifle and shrugs. “Sure.”

Dina rolls her eyes. She’s not sure why she thought she could get anything out of Astrid. Astrid is possibly the least talkative person Dina’s ever met.

Many minutes later, halfway back to the horses, Astrid adds, “Good with a knife.”

Dina bites down on a smile. “Yeah, she is.”

Another beat. They shuffle through the snow.

“Doesn’t talk much,” Astrid says. “Be kinda cute, otherwise. I prefer talkers.”

Dina almost falls face-first into the snow.

\--

The sand in her mouth gave her a burst of inspiration, and Dina grabbed a fistful of the stuff and threw it in the clicker’s face, closing her own mouth and eyes as she did. The clicker sputtered and squawked, and she got her feet under its chest and heaved it off of her.

Dina scrambled to her knees, aimed her pistol with unsteady hands, and squeezed the trigger three times, _pop pop pop_. Two shots struck the clicker’s torso and the third caught its neck. The clicker sputtered and died.

Far away, too far, she saw Talia release a body from her arms and run. Dina took off after her, too far behind, too slow to catch up.

She could just hear Talia grunt as she tackled another figure, the force knocking it off and onto its back. Talia struggled with it, a runner probably, and as Dina approached, she saw their mother climb to her feet in the dim light, her long, wild hair backlit by the moon.

Talia stood and staggered back to them. Up close, she stank of blood. Dina wrinkled her nose and felt her heart racing. Talia touched their mother’s arm, then took Dina by the shoulders. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

Flecks of red formed gross freckles on Talia’s face, under her glasses. Dina panted, her body alight with fear, with panic.

Talia touched Dina’s chest over her heart and took two deep, loud breaths in, then exhaled. “Two breaths in, one breath out, remember?” she coached.

Dina struggled to copy her. After a few rounds, she felt her pulse start to settle.

Their mother touched both of their shoulders and gave them a smile sad and brave. “We need to get out of the open,” she said.

Talia squeezed Dina’s shoulder and nodded at their mother. “Let’s go.”

\--

As soon as the tension settled, as soon as she felt the first taste of relief at a friendship repaired, Dina found herself asking, “How excited was Cat about the tattoo gun?”

Before coming over, Dina had told herself to chill out, had even heard Jesse’s voice saying the same thing in her mind, over and over. But she couldn’t stop worrying it, picking at it, and she couldn’t stop herself from bringing it up.

Ellie met her eyes and then smiled, this secret little smile, like an inside joke Dina stood outside of. “She was pretty excited,” Ellie said, looking at a spot between them in space. “She’s setting it up now.”

“Without you?” Dina asked. She hated that faraway look, like Ellie was _still_ with Cat even now, here alone in the room with Dina.

“I needed a shower,” Ellie said, refocusing on the dirty clothes on the floor. “I might’ve gotten carried away running there right after patrol.”

Dina scoffed. “I bet. You stank by the time we got back.”

“Shut up. You didn’t smell that great yourself.”

“Maybe,” Dina shot back, “but I didn’t have a hot date to run off to.”

Ellie blushed with guilt. “Not a date,” she said. She said it with that edge in her voice, with that bitter aftertaste of hiding something, holding something out of reach.

And this time, Dina couldn’t help but push. She hated that edge, hated feeling misled and lied to. Hated the way Ellie denied her stares, her moony, lovelorn looks, denied the way everything had become about Cat. “You sure about that?”

Ellie startled and looked right at her—then away. “There’s nothing going on with Cat,” she said in a rush, her cheeks bright red. “I’m not…” she began, then trailed off.

It was one thing to deny whatever was going on with Cat, but another to pretend it was impossible. Dina never took Ellie for a coward. What was she so afraid of?

Dina stepped up to her, getting in her space, close enough to slip inside her defenses. “You’re not?” Dina challenged, searching Ellie’s face. “Are you sure?”

For a second, Dina thought she would finally admit it. Finally say the truth out loud.

Instead, Ellie laughed and looked aside. Stepped back, away. “Dina…”

\--

As they near the gates, Dina finds herself fidgeting with the reins. Starting now, or in an hour or two, she’ll stop resisting that pull and instead fall right into its current. Follow it to the end.

She thinks about the bonfire tonight, about seeing Ellie’s eyes in the firelight, about feeling them follow her and knowing what it means for once. She thinks about Ellie’s hands tapping a half-empty cup of whiskey, about her shoulders slumping forward, about her voice rough and warm from drinking.

Again, Dina feels that flutter inside, coupled with an icy fear.

If she does nothing, says nothing, it can just be another night. Another bonfire. She can sit against Ellie’s side and tease her and laugh with her and drink with her and soak it all in, without risking anything more, without getting swept away. She could do it.

But in her heart, she knows there’s no going backward, now. She can’t leave things as they are, knowing what Ellie feels.

What _she_ feels.

The past is what it is, bone turned to fossil, fire burned to ash.

The future is a deluge: overwhelming; inevitable.

There’s only one path, only one choice.

Take a deep breath and hold on.

\--

There was no chance of sleep, after that attack. Dina obeyed their mother, crawled back into her bedroll and hid her face in the warm cocoon, but she knew sleep wouldn’t find her.

Behind her, she could hear their mother crying softly, as she had every night since the fire. Every night since they left.

Maybe every night since that first raid, since their father died. But if their mother had cried then, back at the ranch, Dina hadn’t heard it.

It went on a while. Then, Dina heard rustling. Someone getting back up.

Slowly, feigning sleep, Dina rolled onto her back and then her side, squinting across the dead fire. She could make out their mother’s shape shuffling through the sand, walking past the horse and cart toward the ALBUQUERQUE 25 sign.

Then, quickly, Talia shot to her feet and jogged after her. They looked small; far away. Dina could barely make them out, black shapes against a gray-black sky and gray shrubs. The breeze blew weakly in the wrong direction, and though Dina saw them facing each other, talking, she heard nothing but the distant hum of voices.

Talia would deal with it, she thought. She burrowed deeper in the bedroll, drinking in the smell of horse and earth. The bedrolls and blankets still smelled like the barn at home, where they’d been stored before—everything.

A gunshot cracked the silence.

Dina struggled out of the blankets and up to her feet, fumbling for her pistol.

Only one figure stood, in the distance. Then it fell, too, to half-height.

Dina sprinted for it. When she got there, it was Talia on her knees, sobbing, her face in her hands.

“Tal,” Dina whispered. The pistol shook in Dina’s hands. “W-what happened?”

As she said it, she looked down and saw their mother crumpled on the ground, black ink seeping from her wild hair, soaking into the sand.

“I tried to stop her,” Talia cried. She rocked back and forth. “She said she was bit. I tried to stop her. She was bit. I tried to stop her.”

Dina felt panic and fear whip up inside her in a fury, a great howling wind, a blinding, biting sandstorm.

“Talia,” she whimpered, her eyes burning, “what are we gonna do now?”

\--

They hadn’t come to a bonfire in forever, but they showed up tonight. It was almost like Dina could sense it coming, because she looked at the gate right when they showed up, Ellie pulling it open and Cat walking through first with a stupid fucking giggle. Ellie blushed when Cat took her arm.

When they reached the circle, Ellie put her guitar behind the log while Cat greeted the group and Chad poured them drinks. Ellie sat down and Cat sat right up against her, leaning her elbow on Ellie’s thigh, and Ellie looked around and then startled when she met Dina’s eyes.

Dina knew she must be glaring, but she couldn’t seem to change the expression on her face. It felt permanent, cast in iron.

Ellie shied away, almost guilty. She rested her free hand on Cat’s shoulder. Cat smiled, then turned and brushed her lips against Ellie’s knuckles, and Ellie drummed her fingers and lightly kissed the back of Cat’s head.

Dina couldn’t look away.

The group talked and joked and chatted and Dina just glared. Jesse tried to get her attention, tried to nudge her back to life, but she was a statue, a stone, transfixed, all the images that haunted her playing out in real time across the fire.

Someone got Ellie to pull the guitar around to play. Cat extricated herself, her hand lingering on Ellie’s thigh, and when she spun in her seat, she laid her leg flat across the log with her foot pressed against Ellie’s side casually, intimately.

When Ellie played, she looked at Cat, her smile soft and saccharine. Cat reflected it, insipid and lovesick, and Dina imagined her smile spreading wider to reveal sharp snake’s fangs.

Later, Jesse gave Dina a shot, hoping to break the spell. Dina took it and her eyes went right back to them as her throat burned, right back to Ellie shaking her head at Chad, to Cat cajoling her and taking the shot glass on her behalf.

Cat placed her hand flat on Ellie’s chest and Ellie’s resistance dissolved like a salt in water. Cat moved to cup Ellie’s neck and tilted it back as she poured the shot down Ellie’s throat. Ellie swallowed and then sputtered, and then Cat dropped the cup and pulled Ellie into a kiss, a deep kiss, almost a performative one.

Ellie startled at first, her hands twitching nervously, and then she touched Cat’s waist, and then Cat shifted toward her, fingers buried in Ellie’s hair.

Dimly, Dina heard some of the guys whooping. Jesse nudged her hard and whispered, “Dina, are you okay? Can you chill?”

Cat gripped the front of Ellie’s t-shirt and for a second it looked like she was going to climb right into Ellie’s lap.

What would they be doing if they were home, behind closed doors?

Dina stared, her body thrumming, agitated and angry and utterly trapped.

\--

Dina laughs quietly at herself and puts the hangers back. She’ll wear a coat to the bonfire. Her outfit hardly matters.

She tugs a white shirt off its hanger and puts it on, enjoying the faint tremble in her hands, the quiet flutter in her belly.

In the mirror again, twice in as many days, she checks herself for stains or errant flecks of blood. She starts to step back, satisfied, when her eyes snag on her face.

For a moment, she sees herself through Ellie’s eyes. She sees Ellie thinking of this face on that chairlift, conjuring her from memory, drawing and redrawing each line.

Dina touches her cheek carefully, watching her fingers in the mirror. She imagines Ellie’s hand on her face instead, Ellie’s eyes pinned to her.

Dina swallows and turns away.

\--

Ellie isn’t there yet. Jesse is, but Dina brushes him off firmly and stakes out a seat for herself at the far end of the fire, on an empty log next to Andre that faces the gate.

Jesse brings her a drink and lingers in front of her. “How are you?” he asks, uncertainly.

Dina doesn’t look at him. “Fine.”

Jesse waits for another long moment, then sighs and retreats. Dina rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her drink.

\--

After a while, when the bonfire is burning strong, dark has fallen, and Dina is starting to have trouble making this first drink last, Dina starts to worry that Ellie won’t come at all.

“Damn, that sounds awesome,” Andre says.

Dina drags her eyes away from the gate and smiles at him. “It really was. It would’ve been even better with a real sled, though.”

“We should sneak out there with the sleds sometime,” Andre says, turning to get Candice to agree. Candice isn’t paying attention, so Andre shakes his head and gives Dina a smile of apology. “Well. I bet we could get some people to go.”

“It’s kind of far,” Dina says. “It was all the way out by the lookout.”

Movement catches Dina’s eye and she spots Ellie coming up through the gate, her eyes scanning the group. Her face seems to brighten when she sees Dina—just a little; just around the eyes.

Dina smiles and sits up straighter, feeling that pull. She points at the open space beside her. Ellie ducks her head in a bashful nod and goes to make herself a drink.

“… borrow some horses,” Andre is saying. He gets to his feet and points in Jesse’s direction. “I’m gonna go see the man about it.”

Dina leans back to give him space and when she turns, she sees Ellie walking toward her with a half-empty cup.

She means to tease Ellie about pounding half her drink so fast, but she feels that flutter again, like wind rippling the water, and Ellie’s face is so soft and wary and gentle and sad that Dina barely manages, “Hey.”

Ellie sits beside her, her legs folding up like a knife to sit so low to the ground. Her eyes are light in the flicker of the flames.

“Hey,” Ellie says. She sets her cup in the snow behind them, then bends forward with her arms braced on her knees.

Dina swallows hard. Touching Ellie used to feel automatic and natural, and she did it thoughtlessly, fearlessly.

Now, she’s conscious of every touch, every brush against her.

Dina bites the inside of her cheek and grips Ellie’s arm. “Ellie,” she breathes, and she thinks of Ellie’s arm through the barrier of glove and coat and sleeve. She thinks of the black leaves, of the moth, Cat’s fingerprints left on Ellie’s skin, and Ellie’s skin beneath it, smooth and scarred.

Ellie’s gaze wanders from the fire toward Dina and then back again. “What?” she asks, so flatly it almost sounds mad.

Dina feels her pulse speed up. She wonders if Ellie’s beats fast, too, hidden under her layered clothes. She takes a steadying breath and asks, “Are you going to the dance tomorrow?”

Fear flashes in Ellie’s eyes. She looks straight at the fire and lifts her arm out of Dina’s grasp to rub her eye.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Ellie says in one long exhale. “Probably not.”

It’s not the answer Dina wants, but she has to smile, remembering last year.

How different would things be, if she’d found the journal back then?

“You say that every year,” she says, watching the side of Ellie’s face.

Ellie snorts. Her eyes shift back and forth across the fire. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” she says.

Dina smirks and teases, “Yet you go every year?”

Finally, Ellie looks at her. Something lurks in her eyes. “Maybe, but every year, the odds are low.”

Dina laughs shortly, just once. “I must be on a lucky streak then,” she says, and her hand leaps out on its own, trying to bridge the space between them. Dina settles it between them on the log, her pinky barely brushing Ellie’s leg, the denim rough and scratchy.

The contact is almost electrifying. Like seeing lightning on the horizon strike closer than expected. Dina sucks in a breath and hides it with her cup, looking at the fire.

Ellie turns away from her to retrieve her drink, and she gulps it all down in one go. Dina watches her, her long fingers tipping the cup, her throat shivering as she swallows.

Dina feels that pull, hard and strong, like her heart throwing itself against her chest toward Ellie.

“For real, you should come,” she says suddenly, breaking their usual banter in favor of honesty.

More than anything, she wants another chance with Ellie in her arms. She wants it more than she’s wanted anything in a long, long time.

Ellie looks at her cup, at the fire, at the snow. She looks nervous. Almost frightened.

Dina senses those rainclouds gathering between them. Lightning on the horizon. Thunder in her chest.

“Yeah,” Ellie says, thumbing the rim of her cup. “Maybe.”


	6. I want you to see what I can become

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jackson Days companion chapters: [1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61377817), [2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61395178), [3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61488667), [4](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/61602325), [25](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315567/chapters/63144595)

By the time they cleared the far pasture, Dina felt her eyes starting to droop. The arms around her shifted, gathering up the reins, and Dina settled back in the saddle, warm and safe. She could feel the heat trapped in her hair and in the dark, worn leather beneath her.

“Wake up, peanut,” her father said softly, nudging her elbow. “No napping on the job.”

Dina groaned and cracked her eyes back open, squinting in the sunlight. In front of her, Pacino’s neck stretched tall and proud, his white mane brilliant and blinding. Her father’s hands shifted, pulling the reins back and to the side. Pacino ambled off to the fence and came to a stop.

“Come on, now,” her father said, “we’re almost done.” He heaved up into one stirrup and climbed down, Pacino and the saddle both swaying with the change in weight. He reached up and gripped Dina under the arms, hefting her down to the ground.

She blinked hard and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t want to,” she mumbled as he swung his rifle off his shoulder.

Her father looked down at her, his bushy eyebrows tipped up in sympathy. He squatted down to her level and touched her arm, his hand warm and steadying. “It’s important you see this stuff,” he said, “even though I know it’s scary. Fear is our friend, Dina. It keeps us safe, and protects us when we’re in danger.”

Dina bit her lip and eyed the rifle warily.

Her father moved to one knee and gathered her into his side, holding the rifle up so the scope aligned with her sightline. She put her hands uneasily on top of his on the forestock and trigger, and she shut one eye to look down the scope.

“You see any out there?”

Dina nudged the rifle to the side and he followed her, bearing the weight but letting her guide his aim. Dina spotted one figure on the hill, stumbling and shuddering, and her breath caught.

Her father waited a moment, but when she didn’t say anything, he said, “I see one out there. Do you see it?”

Dina swallowed and nodded.

He lifted the rifle out of her hands and stood. “I’ll get it today, but let’s have you try it tomorrow, okay?”

Dina looked uncertainly at the hill as her father lined up the shot. She heard the crack of the gun firing, and the figure dropped prone on the ground.

“All right,” he said, setting a hand on her shoulder, “let’s head back. We can go listen to your sister practice.”

Dina scoffed. “I don’t wanna listen to her practice,” she said, scrubbing the toe of her boot in the dirt. “It’s the same thing over and over. It’s so boring.”

Her father frowned at her. “It’s important work, Dina,” he said. “You’ll do it someday, too.”

“I know,” she said unhappily, heading off a repeat lecture. She looked down at her boots.

His hand went from her shoulder to the back of her neck, and he tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “Well, if you like, tonight you can do me a favor and bring the sheep in, instead.”

Dina smiled at him. “Yes, please.”

\--

In the morning, Dina opens her curtains to find frost on the window, creeping across the pane like an icy cobweb. The first blush of sunlight tints the edge of the horizon.

Tonight, everything will change.

She dresses in warm layers and as she arranges the gear in her backpack, she thinks of Ellie not that far away, doing the same thing, packing her bag with her pistol and notebook. Maybe her fingertips linger on the cover.

Has she drawn Dina again, since that day at the lookout? Does Dina’s name litter those blocks of text that she flipped past?

\--

Dina frowns at the assignment board. Jesse’s name sits above hers, the nameplate banal and innocent. She wonders if this was the original schedule, or if Jesse switched somebody.

Ellie’s name is still paired with Astrid’s. Dina swallows her annoyance along with the last of her muffin and retrieves Japan from the handler. Out in the yard, she sees Maria with the schedule sheets at the front and Jesse waiting at the far end of the line with his horse. When he sees her, he smiles, a little bashful.

Dina grits her teeth and walks slowly around the loose, mostly-empty circle. Astrid gives her a familiar nod, and Greg fiddles with his saddle, but they’re the only five people out yet.

“Hey,” Jesse says as she approaches.

“Hey,” Dina says, flattening her tone to avoid any hint of enthusiasm.

Guilty for any number of possible reasons, Jesse runs his hand nervously along the saddle and reins. “How are you?”

“Great.” She looks at him pointedly.

Jesse shies a little, cowed. “Um, good,” he says.

Dina climbs into the saddle and turns her head away from him, toward the stable. She catches the last glimpse of movement, someone walking into the stable at the far side. Her heart lifts a little as she wonders if it’s Ellie.

Beside her, Jesse clears his throat, loudly. She gives him a curt glance and he says, “I’m good, too.”

Dina rolls her eyes and turns back toward the stable. Sure enough, Ellie comes into view, petting Shimmer’s nose as they walk.

Tonight, Dina reminds herself.

In the distance, she sees clouds on the horizon.

\--

“Can I ask you a question?”

Joel looked down at her, bug-eyed and almost fearful. He gripped the doorframe. “Uh, sure.”

“When’s Ellie’s birthday?”

He stared. Finally, he stammered, “Uh, w-why do you ask?”

“She’s so secretive,” Dina said with a shrug. “So, I figured I’d just ask you.”

He scratched his ear. “Well… it’s actually next week,” he admitted. “Thursday. I’m, uh, takin’ her camping.”

Dina felt a painful little twist inside, watching Joel talk about Ellie with so much love. She missed the days when her birthday was something she celebrated. She missed having someone to celebrate it with.

“That’s cool,” she said. “That, um, sounds fun. When are you leaving?”

Joel stood upright and crossed his arms in discomfort. “Couple days,” he said. “Be gone a week or two, most likely.”

Dina frowned. That didn’t leave her much time.

“Okay. Thanks!” She turned and scampered down the porch toward home, mentally packing her bag for a little hike outside the walls.

\--

The sound of a gunshot tore Dina from her sleep again. She ran across the hall to Talia’s room, her boots thumping softly against the carpet, but Talia’s bed was empty.

The house seemed quiet. If no one else was freaking out, it was probably just a nightmare, again. Dina took two deep breaths, but her heart still pounded in her throat, in that spot behind her jaw.

She peered back into the hallway, leaning her weight on the wall. She could see light bounce off the corner from the living room, and she heard quiet voices. She crept in that direction, clutching her knife in its leather sheath.

“… stay here,” she heard Talia’s low voice.

“This place was our dream,” said their mother, louder and firmer than Talia. Dina stopped at the corner with her back to the wall. “It was so important to your father. They took him, but they won’t take this from us, too.”

Dina swallowed. She held the knife to her chest and rubbed her thumb over the worn stitching of the hilt.

“It’s not safe,” Talia said softly. “I saw them again when I was in the back pasture today, down the road by the old gas station. It looked like there were more of them.”

“They won’t come back,” their mother said. “If they do, it’ll be for the last time.”

Dina could almost see Talia at the table, touching her glasses, biting her lip.

She heard Talia’s voice again, too soft to make out the words. Their mother replied, “I know, honey. I miss him too. He was so proud of you, you know that?”

Dina poked her head around the corner. Talia and their mother sat facing away from her. They both wore their hair loose; their mother’s was streaked with gray, flecks of salt against pepper black.

“Do you regret—this? Us?” Talia asked, barely audible. “Me, and D-Dina? If it wasn’t for us, he maybe would’ve—”

“Shh, no,” her mother said immediately, touching Talia’s arm. “Never. Remember, you carry a part of him with you. And because of you two, I’ll never really lose him. You see?”

\--

“Are you still mad at me?”

Dina glances over her shoulder. Jesse rides behind her, half hidden by Denver’s head.

“I’m not mad,” Dina says, almost surprised he asked. She might have been mad that morning, that day before she found the drawings, but since then the most she’s felt toward him has been annoyance. Or guilt.

Jesse nudges his horse into a trot and pulls up beside her. Hope colors his face, and she realizes too late that she should have been clearer.

“You’re not?” he’s saying, his eyes searching her, his thumbs rubbing the reins.

Dina sighs. “I wasn’t mad to begin with,” she tries to explain. “Mad wasn’t the problem.”

His eyes and brows pinch in confusion; he watches her and waits.

She sighs again and looks away, just for a reprieve from the pressure. “I meant what I said, last time we talked. I… we’ve run our course, Jesse. We’re over.”

“How can you just say that?” he asks, soft, stricken. “After—everything? All these years?”

When she turns to him again, he just looks sad.

“I—”

“How can you not even give me a chance to fix it? Whatever it is?”

Dina closes her fists around the reins. “Because there’s nothing to fix,” she bites out. “Unless you’re trying to fix _me_.”

Jesse just looks at her, baffled.

Dina nudges Japan forward and moves past him up the trail.

\--

The hike was a lot less fun alone than it had been with Ellie, but this time it went faster, since Dina knew the way. It took less than an hour to find her way back to the campground, with its cluster of overgrown cabins.

Dina crept carefully into the clearing, her pistol at the ready, and listened for movement or danger. When she didn’t hear anything, she hefted a brick from the ground and chucked it against a boulder on the far side. It made a loud _chnk_ , but nothing followed, no chittering or squawking.

Satisfied, Dina made her way back to the big mess hall and climbed up the metal trash cans and in the long, narrow window. The air inside was stale and humid, warmer than the air outside. She made a beeline for the cubbies and dug out the plastic bin again, dumping it out on the table this time and arranging the papers by color.

From the array, Dina chose the brightest colors and set them aside to make jewels. She measured out the crown against her own head and cut the points and edges with precision, using a template on plain paper to keep them even and consistent. At the end, she cut the notches and tested the fit, confirming it sat snug but not tight, and that the notches didn’t tear.

She set the base aside and started cutting jewels out in different shapes and sizes and colors. As she worked, she found herself thinking about her last birthday with Talia, that brief conversation in the early morning hours before she lost Talia for good.

She wondered if Talia had been carrying some secret surprise gift, burrowed in the backpack her killers stole. She had always found something for Dina, every year, even something small. A pretty flower. A smooth stone.

The scissors slipped and the edge of the paper sliced her finger. “Fuck,” she whispered, and as she brought her finger to her mouth, she saw blood soak into the half-cut jewel, a dark splotch in its heart.

\--

Last time, they had Pacino, and a cart, and four of them, and four guns, and provisions, and a plan. This time, they had just Pacino to carry three people and three haphazardly packed bags.

They hadn’t been to town since their father died.

Their mother was quiet. She’d been quiet since the raid, since the fire. She refused to ride; she shuffled on foot and wrung her hands, pulled absently at her hair.

Instead, Talia was the one urging them along. She would walk with their mother a while, holding her hand in silence; then she would ride behind Dina, placing their mother’s hand on the horse’s warm flank, her body solid and comforting behind Dina’s back.

Dina held the rifle, using the scope to watch the road in front of them. She still felt shaken from the raid, from the sudden rush of voices and gunshots, from the oppressive heat of the flames and the sting of the smoke. The crosshairs on the scope wavered in her unsteady hands. She dropped the rifle and rested it on the saddle.

“We’ll be there soon,” Talia said again, maybe to their mother, maybe to herself. “It’ll only take another day or so. Then we can regroup. Maybe we can even stay there for a while. They offered before.”

“Talia,” their mother said. A warning.

Talia’s arm tightened around Dina’s waist. Dina felt Talia twist a little, looking back or down. “I’m just saying,” Talia said, “they always—”

“We’ll see,” their mother said. “Don’t invite bad luck. We don’t need any more of it.”

Dina set her arm over Talia’s. Her fingers caught Talia’s bracelet and it felt like a sign. Maybe their luck would change now that they’d lost everything, now that there was nothing left to lose.

Talia closed the embrace, locking her other hand over Dina’s elbow. She bent to Dina’s ear and said quietly, “You’ll see. Remember how nice they are?”

Dina did remember. She hadn’t always been allowed to come on trips to Carlsbad, but she liked to revisit the memory of Talia’s bat mitzvah, with the ragged congregation and the kind old rabbi. They’d never met before that day, but he’d knelt to her height and given her a firm, warm hug, secure and calming.

That was a long time ago, Dina knew. But Talia was sure.

Dina swallowed and let her eyes settle on the familiar ridge of Pacino’s neck, rising in a tall yellow mountain, his mane a warm white ridge. She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, imagining the boarded-up synagogue, imagining the rabbi welcoming Talia with warm enthusiasm, imagining a warm meal and a safe bed surrounded by protective strangers.

Talia was sure. And there was nothing left to lose.

\--

Jesse leaves her be for a while. When they scout a crumbling neighborhood and encounter a pair of runners, he follows her lead and doesn’t chide her for spending a bullet when a third runner surprises them.

As they make their way to the lookout tower, light snow starts to fall. Dina looks up to see the gray shroud covering the sky and snowflakes catch in her eyelashes and on her chapped lips. She licks them off and they taste cold and clean.

“You’re so pretty in the snow,” Jesse says, and Dina sighs.

She avoids his eyes and dismounts, leading Japan into the lobby without a reply. She loops Japan’s reins around the post and takes the stairs up alone. Each window she passes brings her closer to the sky.

At the top, Dina walks past the logbook to the big glass overlook and slides the pane open. She leans on the sill and looks out across the snowy slopes, the world gray and soft as the smudge on Ellie’s sketch.

Dina feels that flutter again, like the subtle shift in breath before waking from a dream. The world outside is asleep, like she has been all these years, waiting for spring to rouse her.

Tonight, she thinks, excited and terrified. She imagines the rain that will come in a month or two, washing away the last of the snow, clearing a path for new life.

Footsteps echo in from the stairwell and Dina grips the windowsill. She tucks her thoughts away as Jesse comes over, hovering several paces behind her.

“Sorry,” he says awkwardly. “I know that was kinda weird. My bad.”

Dina sucks in icy air from outside and steps back to close the window. “It’s fine.”

“Um, what’ve you got for lunch?” he asks, tilting his body toward the table.

Dina chooses to take the hint and joins him at the table. She sets her backpack on the chair and pulls out two jars. “The usual. Dried fruit and deer jerky. Why, you wanna trade?”

“Nah.” Jesse unfolds parchment paper to reveal a sandwich from the diner. “Think I have the better lunch already.”

Dina snorts, unable to help herself. “I swear, you are so fucking lazy.”

“Just strategic,” Jesse says as he takes the first bite.

Dina narrows her eyes. “Did you get that to go when you were there spreading our business around the other day?”

Jesse’s jaw slows to a stop. He frowns. “It’s not _our_ business anymore,” he says cautiously. “I thought that was the whole point.”

Dina shrugs and tears off a piece of jerky to pair with a piece of fruit.

“You said we were done for real,” Jesse reminds her.

“We are,” she says immediately. “I just—was surprised to hear everyone else knew that, too, already.”

Jesse starts to say something, then stops and edits himself. He looks down at his half-eaten sandwich. “It was kind of for me, honestly. Otherwise people always ask me how you are, or why I’m alone. This way they know… not to.”

Dina considers him and feels herself soften, just a bit.

He shrugs again and looks at her, guarded. “You really don’t see… like, there isn’t any way forward? You and me?”

Dina just shakes her head. “Come on, Jesse. You don’t think we would’ve found it by now? What do you think is gonna change?”

Jesse picks the paper wrapping with his thumbnail. “I don’t know, I think things change all the time. I mean, I think I’ve changed, since we… met. I think you’ve changed. Don’t you?”

“I think…” Dina leans back in her chair, looking at her hands. “I just don’t think we’re changing _together_ , Jesse. I don’t think I’m ever gonna feel the way you—want me to.”

Jesse hangs his head and tears off the corner of his sandwich. He doesn’t answer.

\--

Talia dropped to sit with her legs dangling out, then scooted carefully off the edge and landed on bent knees. She turned and gestured for Dina to follow, and Dina held her bag securely to her back, sucked in a breath, screwed up her courage, and jumped with a muffled yelp. She stumbled a little, but Talia caught her, her arms strong and warm.

“Come on,” Talia said quietly, scanning the desolate streets for movement. Dina let Talia lead the way around the corner, her revolver reflecting the setting sun. Past the sharp brick edge of the building, Dina could see their mother, still rooted to the ground in front of the door, reading and rereading the paper in the window while Pacino shuffled nervously behind her.

Talia slowed as they got closer. “Mom,” Talia tried.

“I can’t believe they left,” their mother said. Her hands twitched at her sides, the fingers curling and straightening, nervous and aimless.

Talia wavered. “You knew they might not be here,” she said. “You said that—”

“I know what I said,” their mother replied. Her voice was tired. Her face looked tired. “But Albuquerque is far. We won’t make it, like this.”

At that, Talia turned to Dina and extended her hand. Dina swallowed and came closer, shifting the heavy pack on her back. “We found some supplies inside,” Talia said, nodding at Dina.

Dina wet her lips. “They left some cans, and stuff.”

“All we need is a cart,” Talia said. She stepped closer and took their mother by the arm.

Their mother finally looked away from the note. “Easier said than done,” she said, although she had already begun to loosen, to come free.

“We’ll just start heading north, and we’ll spend more time looking this time,” Talia said.

Somehow, Talia had a way of saying things that always made them sound so possible, so reachable and attainable. When Dina took a step toward them, she angled her body toward Talia.

Their mother nodded, her eyes far away again, unfocused. Dina wondered if she was seeing the ranch, or maybe their father. It had been over a year since his death. It had probably been weeks since the ranch, by then.

“Let’s get Al somewhere to graze,” Talia said gently, easing their mother into action.

Automatically, Dina corrected, “Al Pacino.”

Their mother’s lips curled, just slightly—the closest she’d come to a smile in a long time. “Al Pacino the palomino,” she said, shaking her head at their father’s stupid joke.

At the sound of his name, Pacino stepped forward and stuck his wet nose between Talia and their mother, snuffling both their ears. They both giggled in surprise.

For one moment, just one tiny moment, things felt like they would be okay.

\--

On the path home, Dina feels lighter with each step. In a way, it feels like the day she left New Mexico and vengeance behind, the day she decided the dead would want her to live. Like there’s hope for a new life for her, just past the horizon.

Today, hope takes the shape of the tall slate walls of Jackson, rising tall and dull against the dead brown trees.

Just a few hours until the dance. Dina pulls that moment to mind again, that night last year when she guided Ellie onto the floor. She looped her arms around Ellie’s neck and felt her thin collarbones, her shoulders warm and strong. Ellie wouldn’t touch her until Dina pushed her hands down. The whole time she had seemed nervous, and sad.

“Dina,” Jesse says, breaking her reverie.

She glances at him.

Under her eyes, he hesitates. “Are you—sure?” he asks meekly. “There’s really no chance that—”

“Jesse,” she says sharply. She can hear exhaustion and frustration lacing her voice. “How many times are you gonna make me say it to you?”

Jesse flinches. “I just mean…”

“Fine, I’ll say it again.” Dina frowns at him. “We’re done, Jesse. I’m… you need to start moving on.”

Pain and love mix together on his face.

Dina bites the inside of her cheek and urges Japan forward, past him, up toward the gates of Jackson.

\--

“How come we never hang out in here?” Dina asked, stepping inside. Joel’s house looked a lot like Jesse’s parents’ house, tidy and warm. Even at a glance, she saw traces of Joel everywhere: a half-whittled block of wood on an end table; an Ellie drawing of Joel framed on the mantel.

Ellie was already retreating to the stairs. “Joel’s usually home,” she said by way of explanation.

Dina trailed behind her. Upstairs, Ellie swung around the banister and strode into an open doorway. Dina walked past a workshop into what looked like Joel’s bedroom, where Ellie was messing with a record player. “Whatcha doing?” Dina asked, wondering if they should be in there at all.

“Playing this sweet album for you,” Ellie said without looking up. She placed the needle carefully on the outer edge of the disc. The player scratched and caught, and music started to play, loud and fast.

“What is it?” Dina asked, raising her voice over the noise.

Ellie grinned and brandished a big square album sleeve with _The Sick Habit_ in huge lettering.

Dina took the sleeve and looked at it, shaking her head. “Is this Joel’s?”

Ellie turned the volume down a little. “Joel’s? Fuck no. Cat saw it on recycling duty and snagged it for me.”

“Oh,” Dina said, flipping the sleeve to look at the back. “Since when are you two so close?”

“I dunno. We just started hanging out more,” Ellie said offhandedly. “Since you and _Jesse_ spend all your time together now.”

Dina rolled her eyes. “Not _all_ our time,” she corrected. “I’m here with you now, aren’t I?”

A smile curled Ellie’s lip. “Yeah, that’s true.”

Dina tapped the sleeve against her hand. Ellie watched her, that coy smile lingering on her face, her fingers tapping the side of the record player.

Then, Ellie turned away and went over to sit on the end of Joel’s bed, her feet up on a wooden trunk. Dina closed the glass lid of the record player and set the sleeve on top of it, then turned and stepped toward Ellie. She hesitated and crossed her arms. “Should we be up here? Is this Joel’s room?”

“We just need the record player,” Ellie said, flopping back onto the bed on her back. “Just chill out and listen with me.”

Dina smiled, watching Ellie stretch her arms over her head, her sneaker tapping the trunk in time with the beat. She came up beside her and sat down on the curved wood of the bedframe, then let her body tip back onto the mattress.

A hand popped out to smack her lightly on the stomach. “It’s good, right?” Ellie was saying, looking at her.

Dina looked at her and dimly, she heard the music still playing, loud and harsh in the gentle quiet of Joel’s house. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s good.”

­They lay still a while, listening to one song, and then two. As the second cut to the silence between tracks, they heard a door slam downstairs, and they both bolted upright.

As if intending to incriminate them, the player started the next song, even louder than the last.

“Ellie?” Joel shouted over the noise and distance, his footfalls heavy on the stairs. “That you up there?”

“Yeah,” Ellie called back. The sleeve fell to the floor as she fumbled the lid open and pulled the needle off the vinyl. It took her two tries to pick the sleeve up off the floor, and three tries to fit the record into the slit in the paper.

By then, Joel appeared. His body seemed to fill the doorway. “Hey, kiddo,” he said, looking at Ellie and then at Dina.

“We weren’t doing anything,” Ellie blurted. “I just wanted to hear this record I found.”

Joel’s brows pushed together in confusion. “What would you be doin’?”

Dina looked at Ellie too, curious.

Ellie looked at each of them, her fingers worrying the edge of the paper. Her mouth hung open, like no words would come.

“You two want somethin’ to eat?” Joel offered after another lingering moment.

Dina glanced at Ellie again, still frozen by the record player. Dina looked at Joel, smiled, and answered for both of them: “Sure!”

\--

Dina checks the sign-in sheet and sees they beat almost everyone back. Ellie and Astrid are still out in the field. She drops off Japan and heads home before Jesse can corner her again.

The less time there is between her and the dance, the longer the moments seem to stretch. Her apartment feels almost eerie, silent and still and empty compared to the energy buzzing inside her like a fly searching each window for an escape.

She dumps her gear and goes to the kitchen to start some dinner. The motions of washing and peeling and chopping are soothing, comforting, an outlet for her nerves. She scrapes the food into a pan and sprinkles it with spices, mixing it as the pan heats up and the food starts to sizzle. She turns the burner down and steps away to let the food simmer.

At the closet, she runs her hand along the hangers, feeling the different fabrics under her fingers, whites and reds and oranges. She lingers on an old piece, a burgundy sweater, warm for the weather but with an open neck for dancing in a sweaty hall.

Something nudges her to turn back and she goes back to check on the food. Sure enough, it’s almost done. She tastes it for seasoning, then moves the pan off the flame and pours it out onto a plate.

She brings the plate to her bed and sits at the foot of it, eating and considering her closet, her room. How many times did Ellie sit with her here on this same bed, silly and nervous and funny and awkward and charming? How different could things have been if it’d been Ellie and not Jesse she spent her days and nights with, without the veil of friendship and uncertainty?

Dina looks down at the coverlet and suddenly wonders what will happen with Ellie tonight, after the dance. Once she’s felt those arms around her again, how will she ever let them go?

She imagines holding Ellie’s hand and stumbling out of the church into the cold winter dark, the snow crushed beneath their boots, their palms hot where they press together. Would she drag her down the street to the playground where she spoke to Ellie that first night, watching her awestruck face limned with starlight, touching the bandage on her arm? Would she pull Ellie here, to the door of her little apartment, to the bed they haven’t shared since that last innocent sleepover before everything changed?

A tremor runs from her throat down her chest and belly, a bolt of heat lightning.

Whatever happens, tonight, everything will change again. You can’t send rain back into the sky. You can’t pull it back out of the earth.

\--

Usually, Dina would have teased her for it, but for some reason it made her feel kind of warm and happy to see Ellie tagging along after her all week. She didn’t seem nervous, exactly, but something drew her to Dina’s side every time they circled up around Steve for a lecture, or sat down to eat lunch.

Despite keeping up her usual teacher’s pet spiel, all wide-eyed and attentive and nodding at everything he said, when they finally broke out in pairs to practice, Ellie sidled up to Dina and muttered, “Is every day so fucking boring?”

Dina bit down on a grin. “I thought you were having the time of your life,” she teased. “There’s nothing on Earth you’d rather do than listen to Steve talk about the gravity of taking the life of an infected half-dead monster who’s trying to eat you.”

“Shut up,” Ellie said, but she smiled as she knocked their elbows together.

Dina smirked and aimed the gun at the target. It felt foreign compared to the pistols and rifles she was used to, the kind they used on real patrol, but it wasn’t so different that she couldn’t hit the bullseye.

Ellie let out a low whistle as the paintball splattered the center mark a second time. “You’re fucking good with that thing.”

“I know,” Dina said. She squeezed another three shots off, then stepped back from the line and held it out to Ellie. “Your turn.”

Ellie screwed her face into focus and leveled one eye over the top of the barrel. Her shots hit the paper, but not in the center.

“You kind of suck at that,” Dina said after the fifth shot, trying to say it as seriously as possible.

“Fuck you,” Ellie shot back easily. “This is, like, totally different from a real pistol. It’s bullshit.”

“Well it wasn’t a bulls _eye_ , that’s for sure.”

“Fuck that and fuck you too.” Ellie tossed the pistol back to her. “Knives are better, anyway. That way the other fuckers don’t hear you.”

Dina’s eyes dropped automatically to Ellie’s hip. She knew Ellie kept the switchblade in her back pocket.

“Don’t make me do my Steve voice,” Dina warned, a smile creeping onto her face.

Ellie glared at her. “Don’t—”

“There’s a tool for every occasion,” Dina said in her best Steve imitation. “You must master all your tools so you can be the most effective at any occasion.”

Ellie rolled her eyes so hard it must’ve hurt. “I’ll tell you who the real tool is,” she snarked.

Steve cleared his throat loudly beside them. “How’re you two doing, then?”

Ellie looked like she’d seen a ghost, so Dina stepped forward and pointed at their target sheet. “Pretty good, don’t you think?”

Under Steve’s arm, Ellie shot her a grateful look.

Dina felt a crooked smile spread across her face.

\--

It’s only six forty-five when Dina steps into the church. It’s cool inside for now, with almost no one there yet. Dina feels her rabbit heartbeat slow just a little, comforted by the familiar setting and the bracelet on her wrist and the sturdy support of her old cowboy boots.

In the corner, Tommy and Joel are chatting quietly by the audio equipment. Maria stands by the bar, talking to someone facing away. Dina approaches as the person walks away.

“Hey,” Dina says. “Need any help?”

Maria turns to her with a smile. “Sure, if you don’t mind. We’re just about done, but Josiah’s struggling with that last set of lights over there.”

Dina busies herself with Josiah, and she gets to watch as he plugs the last string in and the whole room glows with soft white light. It’s nothing new, it’s just like last year, but Dina feels that flutter again.

Like rain coming.

With the lights set up, Dina circuits the room, turning the bottles to face forward, saying hello to Joel and Tommy and Maria. At seven o’clock, a few older early birds stroll in, more to chat than to dance. Dina pours herself a strong drink and sets up facing the door as she sips it. It’s barely five past seven when her cup is somehow empty.

When the first younger crowd comes in, Tommy changes the song to something upbeat and the dancing gets started. Dina joins the group for a while, spinning and stomping to the beat, but she doesn’t lose herself the way she usually does. Her eyes keep scanning the walls, the door.

No sign of Ellie.

As the floor starts to fill in, Dina slips away for another drink. She’s surprised to find her nerves have taken a turn toward worry.

What if Ellie doesn’t come?

\--

Almost as quickly as Dina spotted her, the girl was gone, pushing back up against the older guy she came in with and disappearing through the front doors.

Dina nudged Jesse’s arm, then did it again when he didn’t respond. He turned to her, still mid-smile at his own joke, and she asked, “Who was that new kid just now?”

“What new kid?”

“That girl who was just here.”

Jesse looked at the door like he hadn’t missed her by several minutes. “Oh, uh, Mom said a couple new people showed up yesterday. Some friend of Tommy’s or something. Joel and… Ellen, or something?”

Dina looked at the door too. “Think they’re staying?”

“Yeah, I guess Maria was setting them up in a house today.”

New people. Dina felt a pinprick of curiosity.

“So,” Jesse continued, “they probably won’t get put in rotation ‘til next week or so. Give them a minute to settle in.”

“Right,” Dina said, and she sat back down in her seat. She hadn’t realized she’d started to stand.

A week, she told herself. A week to settle in, get used to all the people, get used to being in a town. A week to shake the fears of the road.

She could wait a week.

\--

Dina dances and drinks until she’s dizzy, from one or the other or both. When she glimpses the clock, it’s only 7:20, and she reminds herself it’s still early.

But what if Ellie doesn’t come?

As she polishes off a third drink, Tommy catches her eye and smiles and changes the song. This one is upbeat and bouncy, and Dina smiles back in relief and flounces back to the front of the floor to start a line dance with some of the younger kids.

Line dancing always reminds her of Albuquerque, of pushing the tables to the side of the mess hall and dancing to Pablo’s beat-up fiddle, of linking arms and smiling and laughing. Tonight, too, it lifts her spirits a little, and she reminds herself that even if Ellie doesn’t come tonight, it’s not like Dina doesn’t know where to find her.

If she doesn’t come to the dance, Dina will just go to her, when it’s over.

And that thought, too, makes Dina feel warm inside, happy and relieved. She’ll knock on Ellie’s door like she has a thousand times, and Ellie will open it, and this time, this time, she’ll take Ellie’s sweet face in her hands and kiss her silly, like she’s wanted to all week, like she’s maybe wanted to all this time, ever since that night at the playground all those years ago.

Tonight, one way or another, those clouds will finally break, rain will slake the dry sand, and after all this time, after all these years, she will let herself open to the sky.

\--

It was more chance than anything else that drew Dina’s eyes to the window at just that moment, just in time to see someone passing by, a shadow layered over the other shadows of the street.

Dina wasn’t sure why, but she stopped what she was doing and grabbed her coat. She stuffed her feet into her shoes and slipped out the door, squinting in the darkness at the shape turning a corner down the road.

She followed.

Around two corners, and then in a wide loop around the stable, she just kept pace, keeping the figure in view. It was thin, small, with a bag and ponytail. It almost looked like—

Maybe.

Then, the figure turned toward the playground and slowed to a stop. Dina slowed down, too, walking closer but staying out of sight.

Here, she could tell it was the new girl, the one she’d seen at the mess hall. Her hands curled around the top of the fence; her head tipped back, up at the sky, her ponytail curling against the top of her backpack. Her eyes looked wet and glassy in the starlight, almost glowing in the darkness.

And for some reason, looking at this girl, this stranger, Dina just couldn’t wait any longer.

“Hey.”

\--

Andre is probably one of the better dancers of the group, so Dina sticks with him for a second song, reminding herself over and over that she has a backup plan, as soon as the dance winds down. He spins her and as he catches her against his arm, he whispers, “Stay right there, Candice is trying to glare at me,” and Dina laughs.

They almost miss the end of the song, and Andre dips her just a second too late. She reaches up to brush the floor with her fingers, the room spinning around her, and she laughs as he helps her up. “Better that time,” she agrees, and Andre laughs.

Chad steps up to them as the song changes, and Dina glances to the side and suddenly Ellie’s there, leaning on the bar, talking to Jesse.

“Ellie!” Dina calls, and her feet carry her there almost on their own, like she’s stumbling downhill. “Hey! What took you so long?” she asks. Her voice comes out high and thin and nervous. She steps into Ellie’s space and takes her drink.

Ellie feels warm and solid and real, her shoulder bony and strong under Dina’s hand. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” Ellie says, and as Dina swallows and puts the glass on the bar, she opens her eyes and Ellie is already looking at her, staring at her.

“Dina,” Jesse says beside her.

Dina glares at him and snaps, “Jesse,” already tired of him today. She slides her hand down Ellie’s arm—thin and soft and warm—and clasps her hand, tugging her toward the dance floor, and she’s saying, “Come on.”

They’re almost free when Jesse calls after them, reminding them about patrol, and Dina rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts. She turns to give him a sarcastic salute and says, “Yes, sir,” in a tone she knows will scare him off.

She rolls her eyes again and trades hands, guiding Ellie forward into an open space.

“You’re such a dick,” Ellie says, and Dina smirks.

“Come on,” she says again, and this time she grips Ellie’s arms right away, placing them firmly around her as she says, “don’t you start with me.”

The smile drops off Ellie’s face the moment her hands touch Dina’s back. Dina recognizes that fear, that nervous flicker, and as she loops her own arms across Ellie’s shoulders, she distracts her: “Okay, I have a very serious question for you.”

Ellie avoids her eyes. Dina smiles, just a little, and asks, “How bad do I smell?”

Ellie looks at her in surprise. Dina smiles wider. And, as predicted, Ellie can’t resist. She leans in and breathes in loudly through her nose.

Dina tries not to laugh. Her heartbeat is loud and fast in her ears. She can feel Ellie shifting, feel their bodies brush against each other.

“Like a… hot pile of garbage,” Ellie says, lifting her eyebrows in challenge.

“Oh, okay,” Dina says back, and she locks her arms and dives in to scrub her sweaty face against Ellie’s cheek.

Ellie groans theatrically as Dina draws back and laughs, “How about that?”

“Gross,” Ellie says, but she’s laughing, and her face looks so warm and soft and almost helpless, up close like this, that Dina almost just kisses her.

Ellie bites her lip and glances aside.

Dina shakes her head a little, shifting her arms, and says, “You love it.” She pulls Ellie into a close embrace, her chin resting on that one soft spot on Ellie’s shoulder.

And this feeling—Ellie against her, beneath her, surrounding her—it’s so strong, so powerful, Dina suddenly feels like the clouds have already gathered above them and around them, like they’re standing on top of a mountain, wreathed in fog.

In her arms, Ellie takes a shaky breath. As Dina’s hand shifts with Ellie’s shoulder, she sees the church lights reflected in the silver talisman of her bracelet.

“Every guy in this room is staring at you right now,” Ellie says, and Dina can feel the soft tremor of Ellie’s voice, traveling from her chest to her throat.

Dina lifts her head a little, considering, and she grazes Ellie’s cheek by accident. “Maybe they’re staring at you,” she says, and she smiles at the thought, at the idea of some idiot thinking he has a chance with her, not knowing what Dina knows.

“Pft. They’re not,” Ellie says back. Her hands shift nervously at Dina’s back.

Dina turns toward her again, slightly, and she bites down on a smile as she says, “Maybe they’re jealous of you,” trying again to give Ellie a nudge, a hint, to draw her out.

Dina stays still, almost frozen, as Ellie shakes her head.

“I’m—just a girl,” Ellie says drily. “Not a threat.”

And—is that the truth of it, then? Is that what roots Ellie in place, a rock moored in this rushing river, immovable despite the forceful current?

Dina feels that tug, strong again, almost sharp. She swallows the last vestiges of fear and moves back from Ellie’s shoulder, scanning her, studying her. Ellie looks up and away and around and back, her eyes nervous and flighty, light and deep.

She looks so scared.

“Oh, Ellie.” Dina touches Ellie’s loose bangs, tucking them behind her ear, clasping her neck. Her pulse beats hard against Dina’s palm. “I think they should be terrified of you,” Dina says softly, feeling that terror herself, feeling that chasm open up beneath her.

But there’s no turning back, once you leave the edge. There’s only one last gasping breath.

Dina feels that flutter in her belly, those restless leaves unfurling as the sky breaks open.

She leans in and kisses her.

\--

For the first time, for one long moment, everything is perfect.

\--

Slowly, Dina breaks the kiss. Her heart pounds her chest like thunder. Ellie looks at her, their faces close, so close Dina feels her breath.

She feels it, now. Cleansed, filled and emptied, like heavy rain washing the waste away, bringing life.

She settles her hands on Ellie’s shoulders, holding her there, soft and real.

And as Ellie moves away, as Dina hears for the first time the quiet notes of the music, Ellie looks at her and she finally smiles that soft, sweet smile again, just for Dina.

And in that moment, Dina knows.

This is it.

This is love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who kudos'd or commented or even just read my work and appreciated it and felt something. I hope this story showed you some of what you wanted to see from Jackson Days. For direct questions, future plans, whatever, you can find me on tumblr under this username.
> 
> Shoutout to the writing club for keeping me on task and letting me homage your stuff here and there, and thanks always to my wife who supports my work and graciously suffers my time-consuming hobbies and pretends it's not annoying.


End file.
